Chiaroscuro
by Nasserwraith
Summary: During the events of DAI, Hawke has been called to assist the Inquisition in the fight against Corypheus. As a result, he has been lost to the Fade. But as Varric drafts his letter of condolence to Fenris back in Kirkwall, he has no idea that the story will not end here. As Fate would have it, there is someone who knows a way to get him back. (Part IV of The White Hart series)
1. Chapter 1

**Chiaroscuro**

_During the events of Dragon Age: Inquisition, Hawke has been called upon to assist the Inquisition in the fight against Corypheus. As a result, he has been lost to the Fade. But as Varric drafts his letter of condolence to Fenris back in Kirkwall, he has no idea that the story is not destined to end here. As Fate would have it, there is someone who might a way to get him back…_

_Part 4 of "The White Hart" series._

* * *

**Letters to Fenris**

The letter shuddered in his hand. Trembling, before it fell; drifting as a brittle leaf might, down to the floor.

_Fenris_, it began. _To be the one to tell you this is both my duty, as your friend, and my burden, as one who has loved you both. Hawke was lost to us today. He faced Corypheus alone, in a battle in the Fade, in order to save a great many lives that otherwise would have been forfeit. I am deeply sorry to tell you; he did not return. His sacrifice..._

He had stopped reading at that point. Slow and painful as it still was for Fenris to get through Varric's overly flowery prose, it wasn't his reading comprehension that had halted him here. _He did not return_. _Hawke was lost_. How could that even be possible? He had seen Hawke just a fortnight ago. They had stood together in their shared bedroom, arguing over whether or not the mage was justified in investigating this newly founded Inquisition in the north. He'd listened as his lover made his case for meeting up with Varric, having a discussion or two about archdemons and such with the elven Inquisitor (something Lavellan, wasn't it?), and then coming home. A few weeks at the most, he'd said. Nothing to worry about. He'd be back before anyone knew it.

So he couldn't be gone. How could he be gone?

It was as though ink and parchment had hollowed out his soul. Had struck a death-blow from which there would be no recovery. It would have been kinder for Varric to simply poison the pages and finish him off right then rather than to leave him forever bleeding out from cuts made by words. Blood would have been better anyway, and not the water that was seeping into his collar. As it was, Fenris had only wept openly twice in his life. The first time that he could recall being the day Danarius had finally been defeated and the crushing weight of enslavement lifted from his life. The second being now.

The pain was like nothing else; not even comparable to the ritual that had given him his lyrium markings. Rather than searing his skin outwardly, it came from deep inside of him; twisting his insides until harsh, wrenching, sobs were rung out of him. He all but collapsed back into the chair.

He should never have let Hawke go alone. He should have been there.

But he wasn't. And Hawke was dead.

Now, for the second time in all his years, Fenris sat by the hearth in a desolate mansion in Kirkwall with nowhere else to go and not a soul to look in on him. He felt such rage, but didn't dare risk breaking anything in their home. What sacrilege that would be. He struggled with grief, but for a time could only aimlessly wander from room to room. He walked to the edge of their bed over and over again, but couldn't bring himself to lay down in it. If the bedsheets still smelled like him, he would never get up again.

The last night they had been together, before Hawke had set off for the Inquisitorial fortress at Skyhold, they'd lain there entwined, with the soft glow of the hearth at their backs; talking about the future. Hawke had absently touched him; stroking his fingertips along Fenris' arm and up onto the ridge of his ear as the mage was in the habit of doing when relaxed.

"I'm thinking about starting a Guild Council." Hawke had said. "Without a Viscount, Kirkwall is going to continue having troubles reconciling the trade networks with Ferelden. I might even be able to convince Varric to go in on it with me. Aveline too maybe."

"Hm." He'd responded. Hawke was never idle for very long and it didn't surprise Fenris in the least that he was already thinking about his next project; the next big idea.

"I'll talk to Varric about it while I'm up there."

"Hawke," Fenris had whispered then. "I should accompany you. Varric's letter troubled you. You might need my help."

"I'll be fine, Fen." His lover had repeated. "This is more of a consultation kind of thing. I'm not looking for a fight. Besides, you hate snow and you can hold down the fort here while I'm gone."

While I'm gone.

Forever.

The hearth was cold. He'd neglected to start the evening fire earlier but at least he had not been plunged into complete darkness. It appeared that Orana, their elven housekeeper, had come through recently and lit the nighttime candles, if nothing else. She'd even left him a plate of warmed dinner; which, of course, he hadn't touched. Fresh tears slid down his face before he could blink them away. He was hungry but couldn't eat. He couldn't even bring himself to break open the wine. Better for the emptiness to just consume him quickly.

* * *

Fenris awoke with a start. He must have fallen asleep in the living room chair. The fire was lit and roaring comfortably. The blanket from the lounge had been tucked around him. The room seemed…brighter. Almost cheerful. Was this a dream? Someone was humming but he couldn't see who; a lilting tune, almost like a lullaby. But with Fenris' current mood, it just sounded sad.

With a cantankerous growl, he threw the blanket off and stood up.

"Orana?" He called. He assumed it was her, anyway. She'd remained with Hawke, and the estate, ever since they'd freed her from Hadriana but she also had a habit of ghosting through the house at times like this. Things would appear and disappear, or be neatly put away and cleaned, without so much as a glimpse of her presence most of the time. It really did give the impression that the house was haunted. Pleasantly, helpfully, haunted.

"Orana?"

"It's very late. I sent her to bed."

He knew that voice. Genial. Temperate. He turned.

Mariner!

To Fenris' utter surprise, the young _ashvani_ stood in gentle repose, his hands folded at his waist and regarding him in return from the low, orange, light of the hearth. But something else struck Fenris immediately. He hadn't seen the other elf in perhaps just over a year but Mariner looked…very different.

The chocolate-brown caravan coat seemed the same, with beautiful embroidery unfrayed and in good order, but what had once been the long, auburn, locks indicative of his Elusivir heritage were now oddly bled to white. True, Mariner had always had those wispy white strands at the ends but that had been only a few inches at the most. It was white as snow now to his shoulders with only a few streaks of brown and gold left at his crown and down to frame his face. His eyes were the same though, and they glittered with joy at seeing his friend again.

"Mariner?! What…what are you doing here?"

"I came as soon as I heard."

"Heard? What have you…Hawke. You know what happened to Hawke?"

Mariner paused at the sudden accusatory tone that erupted from Fenris' unsettled form.

"Not…as such. But, more or less." He replied.

Fenris stared at him for several moments, clenching and unclenching his fists as he tried to parse the strange response and even stranger presence. He finally came to some sort of conclusion.

"What do you know?"

Mariner sighed and motioned towards the divan. "May I?"

Fenris nodded and fell back into the chair as his erstwhile companion took a seat opposite him.

"Alright." The elder elf stated flatly. "I'm listening."

"I was near Skyhold. I saw him arrive last week."

"What were you doing at Skyhold?"

Mariner offered a wan, but distant, smile. "Someone there is looking for me."

"And…did they find you?"

"No. Not yet. But …he is patient."

Fenris couldn't help but glare at the other across the room. He hated cryptic conversations like this and he was in absolutely no mood for riddles and insinuations.

"Mariner." He said. "Tell me what happened to Hawke. How did…" He choked up rather suddenly and was forced to pause for several moments. "How did he die?"

But Mariner did not offer him comfort or condolence in that moment, as he was anticipating. Instead, he outright rotated the world on its axis. "Hawke isn't dead, Fenris."

"I…what?! Mariner, Varric was pretty clear. He said…"

"I know what the letter said. But Hawke isn't dead. That's why I've come all the way here."

Again, Fenris could do little more than stare at the other elf; his expression of shock and confusion slowly morphing into mourning and then from sorrow to the first glimmer of hope. His voice, however, came out as a barely strained whisper.

"Mariner, please don't do this. I can't…if you're not absolutely certain…"

"I'm sure, Fen. I know where he is. That's why I came to get you. I know the way but I don't think I can free him alone. Only you can do that, from what I see."

When had the world changed so much? When had such a fragile, young, _ashvani_ become so strong, so undaunted and ethereal? When had he, Fenris, gone from being the protector, the elder, to the wavering novice? Who was this; sitting, calm and serene, in his living room?

"What happened to you?"

Mariner smiled; a gentle, genuine, expression that put Fenris inexplicably at ease. "A great many things. Most of which I don't really have the time to explain to you but I promise you, it's still me. I still have Bodkin too, if you can believe that, but I left him in the stables up north. I have the dagger you gave me; here in my pocket. I've even used it a few times in ways I think you'd be proud of. I still see the butterflies and they still follow me wherever I go. But…" His face darkened. "I've also begun to see the world differently. I have found memories; terrible, tragic, memories, hidden away in far secret places. Suffering and destruction, but also longing, and dreaming…and love. Like crystal shards buried in the corpse of a long-lost time, after everything shattered. And when I find them, they become a part of me: like I'm…sweeping broken glass from a dirt floor, only to just now see that it was actually once a beautiful stained-glass window filled with color and light."

Fenris was nonplussed.

"Is that…what happened?" He motioned vaguely towards Mariner's head.

The Elusivir laughed. "In a manner of speaking, I suppose yes. It appears to be a reaction to my contact with Unveiled places, and with the Fade. At this rate, I figure I'll have lost all semblance of my normal color within the next six months. Rather like you."

"The Fade didn't do this to me." Fenris remarked, splaying his lined fingers for emphasis. "The lyrium ritual did."

"Same difference."

Fenris sighed. "And…this is how you know…where Hawke is? Something about the Fade?"

"Hawke accompanied the Inquisitor and his commanders into the Fade to fight Corypheus. When they became trapped, he stayed behind to ensure that the others, the Inquisitor and the Grey Warden, could escape. What is more, I think he also did it because he's hot-headed and wanted to mete out a little revenge. He has a history with this particular creature, I think."

"And…you were there?"

Mariner chewed his lower lip indecisively but finally met Fenris' gaze. "I was."

"But," The _ashvani_ continued. "He did not know it. Hawke did not see me, nor did the archdemon. For that reason, I have seen where they were and where they went. I know the way back."

Fenris narrowed his eyes incredulously. "You traveled into the Fade without assistance?"

Mariner could already see that this particular point of the conversation, though inevitable, was not going to go well. Fenris wasn't stupid and had already likely compared the story he was hearing with the reality that physically traveling into the Fade was impossible. Or, at least, as far as he knew it. Mariner, however, decided to simply opt for honesty.

"Yes."

"How?"

"Because I can."

It was the truth. Mariner had discovered the fact that he could pass through the Veil almost at will months ago and it suddenly explained so much of what had happened to him over the course of his uncanny life. In moments of fear and flight, he often even did so unwittingly; shifting from one side to the other almost as quickly as he took a step. Now, he'd begun to learn that he could also control this act of bridging. Perhaps the eruption of the Breach had something to do with it and maybe it didn't but right now, he was the only hope Hawke had of ever getting back to Fenris and to the life they'd only just begun to build.

"I didn't realize you were a mage." Fenris finally responded.

"I'm not." Mariner rejoined. "I'm not in the habit of manipulating the energies of the Fade in that way, in any case. Merely …passing through them."

Fenris still seemed unconvinced but he did not think Mariner was being deceptive nor coming to him with mal-intent.

"So." The _ashvani_ prompted. "Will you go?"

Fenris rolled his eyes slightly. "As opposed to what? Stay here and wait for everything to rot and fall apart around me? Again? If you say Hawke is alive, then of course I am with you. How could I not be?"

"Ar aman shathe. (I am happy)" Mariner nodded. "But we should wait until it is light. The roads north are treacherous in the dark."

The Elusivir then stood up and began to wander curiously around the room, poking around between book pages or idly lifting vases as he went. Fenris watched him for several minutes, wondering whether or not he should ask Mariner if there was something specific he was looking for or if he should just wait and see what the younger elf eventually came up with.

"I hear it." He finally said. "But I don't see where you've put it."

Fenris cocked an eyebrow. "Put what?"

"The crystal I sent you. It's here somewhere."

"The Winternight ornament?" Fenris asked. "What do you need that for?"

Ironically, many of Hawke's Winternight decorations were actually still in place; some haphazardly dangling from the lintel and others laying in small piles on the end table. Winternight had passed almost six months prior but to Fenris' amusement, he had watched as Hawke had casually begun to incorporate some of them into the usual décor of the house. Dried evergreen sprigs and herbal garlands still perfumed the estate with their fragrant memories and a few of the tree candles remained perched on tables and over the hearth for a little cozy ambiance when the moment called for it.

"I don't need it." Again, Mariner replied cryptically, though he continued to rummage through the living room in an amiable way.

Finally, after overturning a stack of books behind the divan he made an affirmative exclamation. Holding up the thin crystal on its satin ribbon, he smiled at Fenris. "Here it is!" He then approached the other elf, still seated as he was on the lounge chair.

"Give me your hand."

Fenris stared at him a moment but then complied without much hesitation; raising his right arm into the other elf's waiting hands. But when Mariner began to deftly undo the red cloth tied around his wrist, he balked and snapped his wrist upwards and out of his grip with a scowl.

"I'm not removing it, Fen." Mariner cajoled. "I'm only retying the back of it to hold the shard."

"What for?" Fenris demanded.

Mariner sighed. "_You're_ going to need it."

The concerned silence drew out between them.

"Trust me." 

* * *

Three days later on the road to Skyhold, Fenris couldn't help but worry his fingers at the small crystal wrapped in cloth over the cuff of his gauntlet. It saved him, however, from worrying at the letter still folded in his pocket.

_…has ensured that the fight against the forces of death and destruction will not end here. Hawke's death will not be vain. But I can only imagine that this comes at no comfort to you, Fenris. No doubt, you will hate me, hate the Inquisition, and hate everyone who could not save him. But I assure you, not nearly as much as I will forever hate myself. We tried. We failed._

_I am so sorry._

_Varric_

This was a fool's errand. Surely, it must be. Though the faintest hope still lingered in Fenris' chest that what Mariner spoke was true, he couldn't help but feel that all this was little more than a distraction to get him through the worst parts of grieving. Hawke was dead. Gone. Irretrievable. And no amount of fanciful story-telling about Fade Walking or Veil magic or Elusivir tricks could change that. This was false hope. A compassionate lie.

He glanced over at Mariner, who was jaunting up along the path rather cheerfully; virtually in his element traveling along the high roads and into the mountain foothills. They'd conversed little in the past few days; opting more for companionable silence as Fenris tried to work out whether or not he thought any of this was worth the effort. But, if he was being completely honest with himself, he did enjoy the company and having something to do, even if it was ultimately futile, and it felt better than being sequestered alone in an empty house. Unfortunately, then, to his relative disappointment, Mariner suddenly spoke up.

"Fen? How did you meet Hawke?"

"What?"

"Meet Hawke. I'm just curious, really. How did you and Hawke end up together?"

"You mean since we seem so completely at odds?"

The _ashvani_ laughed. "I didn't mean it like that. I was just hoping you'd tell me more about your memories of him."

It was a weird way to phrase his question but Fenris didn't point it out.

"We…met in Kirkwall." He started. "But I've told you this before."

"Tell me again."

Fenris sighed but trudged along. "My old master was pursuing me and, when I had the money, I hired a few companies to help me ward off the hunters he set on my trail. Hawke was one of them."

"Hmm." Mariner tilted his head to let the breeze blow an errant lock of hair off of his face. "And from there you…"

Fenris chuckled. "No. Nothing like that. We became friends first; over time anyway. He would come to the old mansion I was living in at the time and we would chat, or play cards, or whatever. I didn't realize he was…" He coughed. "…interested in me until later."

Mariner happily egged him on. "How so?"

"Hawke is just…like that." Fenris said, shaking his head. "I mean, he's flirtatious. Charismatic. People just like him. It just happens that way wherever he goes. So, I didn't really think anything of it when he was like that around me. I figured it was his personality."

"But?"

The elder elf growled lightly to express his discomfort with the current line of questioning but Mariner was not to be dissuaded. He tried a different angle.

"How did you know it wasn't just his personality?"

Fenris chuffed. "He made a pass at me."

Mariner snorted in response. Fenris was always so utterly, and amusingly, direct in the ways he spoke about certain things. "And?"

"And nothing. I turned him down."

Mariner actually paused at that; stopping in the middle of the road to stare across the short distance at Fenris as he made his way up from behind. "You…turned him down?!"

"Of course I turned him down. Crazy apostate mage hitting on an elf on the run from a Tevinter magister in the middle of an uprising. Terrible idea."

Mariner actually sputtered a little. "But…how then…wait…I don't…"

Fenris smirked but as he walked past the confused Elusivir he made sure not to let the other see it. It didn't take long for Mariner to catch up with him, however. "But _obviously_ that changed. Right?"

"Yes." Fenris replied. "It changed." _Everything changed._

Mariner didn't respond but Fenris could tell he was unsatisfied. He turned his head and looked over at the other elf with a gentled expression. "Hawke was…faithful. True, he had a habit of encouraging untoward reactions from people and he basically flirted with almost everyone he ever met in some way or another but it didn't take me long to notice that he also went to bed alone every night and that there was never anyone else with him when I would see him in the mornings. Not for lack of offers, either. He just…liked being around people but when the moment actually came for anything more, he turned them away. Everyone except me."

Mariner took note of the wistful expression in Fenris' eyes as he continued. "There was one other, I suppose. Who was interested in Hawke in that way, I mean. Anders. I think that's probably why he never liked me that much. He wanted Hawke but Hawke wanted me."

Surreptitiously glancing down at the red cloth wrap still securely around Fenris' wrist, Mariner offered another bit of encouragement. "It must have upset him then when Hawke stayed with you."

Fenris chuckled low in his throat. "I'm sure it did. But to answer your question, I went to him. To Hawke. It was probably a bad idea, but I don't regret it. We had our ups and downs, figuring each other out and all that but I've never once doubted that Hawke was committed. Even in the worst times, he was always there with me. He never turned me away…even when I did it to him."

"He loves you."

"Yes."

The two elves fell back into companionable silence; the soft crunch of the gravel beneath their feet and the high, cold, wind their only accompaniment. Skyhold was less than two days away by this path and soon they would need to turn off the road and into the wilds to reach the place where Mariner intended to take them. But for now, the birds were singing again and the sun was shining down bright enough to warm them in the late afternoon hours. Two elves, worlds apart, intent on a common goal, but where one of them reminisced in sadness about a love lost to the vicious vagaries of despicable fate, the other tentatively reached out to touch the fold of a threadbare piece of cloth wrapped around Fenris' wrist. Perhaps the gesture was meant to comfort but what the warrior could not see was the faint blue glow of light that momentarily sparkled from between the threads in response to the contact.

He did, however, feel strangely less alone.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes:**

Vocabulary Recap from "Stranger Places:"

· _Ash_ – a male elf

· _Asha_ – a female elf

· _Ashvani_ – an intersex-female elf

· _Aras Telvani_ – Elvhen: The White Hart

**Cangiante**

Solas stared angrily at the wet plaster wall. His newest fresco, still half-finished, stared passively back at him. A swipe of yellow, a roll in the brush-strokes of blue and pale lavender, and he'd begun to render a sunset that encompassed half the panel. Part of the problem he had realized, however, was that this particular section was a story he wasn't entirely sure he was ready to tell. For the most part, the frescoes in Skyhold followed the triumphs and adventures of the Inquisition; a sort of trophy wall for the growing saga of the Breach. But woven throughout were the threads of a much older story. One that only he knew. Or, at least, one that he had long believed that only he knew.

He threw the brush in his hand back into the water cup and sighed; leaning precariously onto the scaffolding to stretch his back from the hunched position he'd already been in for hours. This _uthenera_-weakened form certainly had its annoyances but with a few twists and turns, he finally began to work out the worst of the kinks. For several moments, he was lost to thought.

The White Hart lived.

Impossible.

And yet…

For weeks now he had hunted the Fade in order to see him, touch him, again; but to no avail. Not since he'd tracked down the Tevinter magister, Gallio Ravenica, in his estate in Minrathous, had he heard so much as a whisper of the _ashvani_ who now appeared to claim the title, Aras Telvani. Not since he had put the Serenic slaver to death in his own study had the trail led him anywhere useful. He had tried to be patient. He had both actively sought the White Hart and waited quietly in meditation for him to return. He had visited places in dreams that might still hold meaning for him and had lain alone night after night in the castle rotunda at Skyhold. But no matter what he did, the Hart would not approach. He could feel him, though. He could feel the whole world changing.

If he was being honest with himself (and he usually was), Solas had to admit that perhaps it was the right choice on the part of the other; not to come to him again. If Aras Telvani had also only recently awakened from millennia of _uthenera_, meeting now in these volatile and sensitive mortal forms could have…consequences. They'd joined in the Fade, but such was a far cry from what might come to pass if they were to physically come together here, in this world, such as it was.

But his logic did little to calm the cravings, the rising need to pursue the _ashvani_, taking root through his veins. The White Hart could not possibly have survived the formation of the Veil. He had been rent. Torn asunder. Shattered. Solas had witnessed his mate's death with his own eyes. Known forever afterwards that it had come at the doings of his own hands. And yet, Aras Telvani lived. Somewhere.

Thoughtfully, the ancient elder turned back to his fresco; his eyes traveling up and across the panels depicting Corypheus destroying Haven to his outlines of Celene with a blue dress and flared, golden, collar. With renewed inspiration, he plucked the brush from the water bath and began to work golden braids into the landscapes and figures all around him. Then stars, then rays and a circle. Colors, shapes, and a flow…a language…that only one other could truly read.

* * *

Fenris was dreaming again.

_Black spears set in rows in the trenches of a battlefield made for trees in a scorched and barren wilderness. Mud was the same as blood and the red clouds against a darkened sky were merely the splatters from the wounds carved into the soil below. He called for Hawke, but the wind stole the sound from his breath. He called again, but nothing._

_Somehow, he knew that Hawke was close by, though. He had seen him, or thought that he had seen him, kneeling on a hill. But the images were all so fragmentary, and moved quickly out of his reach, as dreams tended to do. But he pushed on regardless. He would find him. He had to find him._

_"Hawke!"_

_There was a rumble in the distance; so very much like thunder and so very much like the stirring of great beast on the horizon. The rocks beneath his feet were moving. He was sliding, and then falling._

_"HAWKE!"_

_He felt a touch along his arm; soothing and familiar. Then a body pressed against him. Hawke's voiced whispered into his ear but the only words he could make out were clearly meant to placate him and keep him still. Something red crossed his vision and then he knew it; a demon of desire with Hawke's face leaned over him. It grinned and suckled at the skin along the side of his neck. It tried to caress him. But subconscious instinct made Fenris hostile and he struggled to tear himself loose of the slowly constricting grip. It was suffocating him; languidly, intimately. He cried out and something behind him struck the entity, sending it spiraling into the depths of his unconscious mind. He thought he might fall again but before that could happen, someone reached out and pulled him free._

_The world was turning over on its end. Pressure gave way beneath his back and for a moment he thought he saw the silhouette of a great stag moving through the maelstrom. A flash of white caught his attention and he turned to follow, which, to his surprise, seemed remarkably easy. They were in a valley now, on a low road between soaring peaks that looked like faces turned towards one another. Strange, high, elven faces gazing across a chasm with a well-worn footpath between them. Like a road that had once seen a great exodus; that had taken many into the safety of the reach and would again._

_Fenris had a sense, somewhere deep in his soul, that he should follow that road too. In an odd way, that he belonged on that path. That it would take him somewhere that made sense, or at least, made sense of all of the current confusion. But before he could think on the matter further, something at his core rebelled. He pulled away from the path and turned his back on the mountains. He couldn't leave. He would not leave. Not Hawke._

_The night was falling again. Perhaps he was lost but he felt no fear in that. If he had to stumble around in the dark for all eternity, he would gladly do so with the hope that the light had only temporarily turned away from him in another direction; that he simply needed to keep searching until he found it again, and never face the possibility that it had been completely extinguished from the world. Finally, there was movement in the gloom._

_He was not alone. Someone was out there._

_From somewhere near him in the darkness, a voice wavered._

_"Fen? Are you there?"_

_"Hawke!"_

Fenris woke with a shout and abruptly sat up.

He was in their camp. A low fire burned in a stone ring. Crickets chirped merrily in the background of the leaf litter as they lay beneath a copse of large trees a hundred yards from the road. He was still wrapped in the thick bedroll he'd brought, with a light dusting of frost from the cold night crystalizing on the tips of his hair and across the top of the wool folds.

"Bad dream?"

Mariner was also awake, and, in fact, looked as though he hadn't slept at all. His blanket was untouched and his clothing unperturbed. He sat near the fire, tending a log as sparks whirled up into the night; passively observing the slow arc of the stars through the branches overhead.

Fenris growled in response, rubbing at his neck and forehead. "They're all bad."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

He glanced up at the _ashvani_. Something was troubling him.

"You're not sleeping?" Fenris asked, hauling himself closer to the heat.

"No." Mariner replied as he continued to gaze up at the sky. "I rarely do anymore. Then again, I sometimes think that I've been asleep for a very long time. Or that maybe I'm not really even awake now."

Fenris huffed in response. "You really do have a bad habit of talking in circles lately. You know that don't you?"

"I'm sorry, I don't mean to."

The elder elf picked up a long stick at his side and began to poke the central log until it turned over and flared back into a heady flame. More sparks showered them from the stone ring but winked out in the cool breeze before they managed to land.

"Mariner? Can I ask you something?"

"Of course."

"What did you mean when you said that someone at Skyhold was looking for you? Are in you trouble? With the Inquisition?"

Mariner smiled and turned to meet Fenris' eyes. "No, I'm not in any danger. Not from him anyway."

"Is he…someone you know?"

"Someone I knew."

Fenris shot Mariner a withering look from across the embers. He was tired and he was already getting a headache.

"I'm sorry. I mean that he's someone I was close to in the life I had before this one."

"Oh, back in the caravan? I see. Old friend or… lover?"

Here Mariner remained guarded. He still wasn't sure how much he should reveal just yet. Fenris might not understand. "I think it would be fair to say a little of both but we didn't exactly part on the best of terms."

"Ah." Fenris replied. "Do you even want to see him again then?"

"I do." The other sighed. "I need to. Eventually."

The campfire crackled and popped, sending tiny flutters of light up into the trees.

"So, where are we going exactly?" Fenris finally asked.

"To the Stone Grove at Ghassa." Mariner answered. "There's a very old temple there to the Elvhenildë and the Veil is thin."

"The Elvhenildë? I don't think I know that one."

"Most people don't. It's not a story that anyone tells anymore."

"Who's Elvhenildë, then?"

"Who are they." Mariner chuckled. "The Lovers. Before Fen'Harel became the Dread Wolf, he was part of a pair; a duality. I mean, he also wasn't called Fen'Harel either but you get the idea."

Fenris nodded with passive interest.

"His counterpart was called Aras Telvani." The other continued. "The White Hart. But they weren't polar opposites as is so often the case with mythologies like this. Light versus dark kind of thing. Rather, they complimented one another; played to each other's strengths instead of making up for specific weaknesses. That's why they were usually depicted as a wolf and a stag; forever locked in endless pursuit but neither ever truly being able to exist without the other. Their temples were an homage to balance, to the natural order of the world. Or the world as it should have been."

"I'm guessing things didn't work out so well for them." Fenris interjected. "Seeing as no one knows about them anymore."

Mariner reached out to warm his hands over the renewed fire. "Sadly no, it didn't. What few people know is that when Fen'Harel betrayed the Evanuris, he intended to do so to his death. Or, at least, to his own banishment right along with them. But in the end, the Hart would not abandon him and pulled his lover from the abyss before it was too late. Unfortunately, that act also destroyed him. Since that time Fen'Harel became…Fen'Harel. The Dread Wolf; unwelcome everywhere and always roaming on the fringe. One half of a missing whole."

"Almost makes you feel sorry for him, doesn't it?"

"The Elusivir and the Dalish have rather different feelings about the Dread Wolf in that regard. The Dalish honor him but consider him frightful; keeping his icons to the edges of their camps. The Elusivir see him as a protector. It's not unusual for wagons to carve his image over the back threshold, so that he is always watching out for the vulnerable rear of the line. As far as I know, I don't think City Elves really think about him at all, though."

Fenris stretched and nodded. "Not really. Not in Tevinter anyway, but that's pretty much true of any of the Elvhen gods. Slaves may talk about them from time to time but it's not like the magisters really let their elves worship elven deities."

Mariner looked up from the fire pensively. There was something he had long wanted to ask Fenris about but had never really had the chance. Even during their relatively short captivity together in the household of Gallio Ravenica, Mariner had never really asked him about being a slave.

"Fenris? What was it like, to be raised in a magister's household?"

Fenris looked back up at him slightly aghast. "You want to know what it's like being a slave!?"

"Actually…yes. I mean, yes, I know what I saw when we were captured in Amaranthine but I've come to realize that enslavement, real enslavement, is an experience that so many of our people have and I know so little about. The Elusivir kept me safe all my life, and for that I am grateful of course, but the vast majority of elves in this world aren't like me. They're like you."

Fenris huffed irritably but didn't immediately reject the question. He'd never liked this kind of conversation, though. A few times, Hawke had asked him similar things and while he'd tried to convey his feelings about the situation, he'd rarely offered up details. At least, not in the way that he was almost sure Mariner was asking.

"It's…" He started, with no small measure of hesitation. "It's hard to explain. It's the most horrible, degrading, thing that can happen to you that you might not necessarily even realize. A slave always knows they are a slave, but so much of the worst of it just becomes normal. You live with it as though it's just the way things are. People die all around you, people you care about are taken away at a moment's notice, you could be beaten…or raped…as anyone wills it." He paused to collect himself. "Or whenever it was your master's pleasure to do so."

"Is that why it is so hard to free them?" Mariner asked. "Because it's normal?"

"I…don't know." Fenris replied. "It took me awhile to understand it myself. My habits were ingrained; even just the way I thought about things. The future simply didn't exist so there was no sense in worrying over it. Hawke was what finally changed it for me."

Fenris found Mariner's resulting smile a little off-putting. "Not immediately but…eventually."

"I understand." The _ashvani_ tilted his head with a softened expression. "We'll find him, Fen. I promise you that. Hawke is close to you, even now. Not even the Fade can keep him away from you for long."

There were some bonds that could not be broken.

* * *

Several hours later, Solas put down his brush for the final time. The fresco was, at last, complete. A pack of wolves now adorned the second panel; with golden lines transitioning obscure, black, beasts into bright, shining, ones. The Eye of the Inquisition also now stood out prominently in the center, with eleven diamonds arched over it and the blade of a sword bisecting the image below into two equal halves.

It was a representation of something he was beginning to suspect but had yet to confirm beyond what nagged at his intuition.

The White Hart existed on both sides of the Veil.

It was the only logical explanation he could come up with. Somehow, in the chaos that erupted as the Veil fell, he hypothesized that it hadn't just shattered Aras Telvani when he was caught within it; it had split him completely in two. Then, as the pieces of his broken soul had rained down into the physical world, his core…his heart…the very essence of him, had cleaved; leaving one side of him in the Fade and the other in the mortal world. A being both Tranquil and Serene; both cut off from the Fade and immersed within it. It rather mirrored precisely what had happened to reality itself, now that Solas thought about it. But it also explained everything else he had seen thus far.

It was why he could not seem to track the Hart in either world. The memory of Aras Telvani still drifted through his dreams and raced through the ether on swift and untraceable feet. But he also lived; a solid, breathing, and beautiful Elvhen _ashvani_ who had proven to be quite adept at physically eluding him. He'd even sent some of his best spies to root out the Elusivir Oracle, with no luck. Whenever his agents seemed just about to come upon him, Aras Telvani would vanish. Solas also now understood how the other had appeared to move so easily between the material and the immaterial. In short, because he was conscious in both, because he existed in both simultaneously, like the libraries and galleries of Arlathan once had. That was how he had survived. Fractured. It was simply something Solas had not ever imagined possible. But he knew that his counterpart had been steadily growing in power with each remembered fragment of his life before; gleaned from the hidden places of the world where the remnants of his soul had fallen. The White Hart was awakening.

Solas gazed calmly over his creation one final time before leaving the plaster to dry and the colors to set and deepen. In the panel he had completed before this one, the Inquisitor, Vashtan Lavellan, had even commended him on his rendition of the destruction at Haven. The geometric shards that fell from the sky, however, weren't just artistic license when it came to showing how the sky had been broken on that particular day but how the world, his world, had been broken before it. And then there were the slopes on either side, as if to suggest a valley, and one day, the way forward. If Mariner were to come to him at last, and see what he had done here, he would understand what he was seeing.

Mariner. That name almost struck a wound straight to his own heart. The elder Elusivir Oracles, particularly those who had been responsible for reading the signs that gave the unusual child in their midst a name, had not understood the whispers in the Fade that had come to them. What they had misheard as "Mariner" could be none other than the ancient word, Maren órë: The Fire at the Heart of the Home. It was what their people had called him, though Solas had only ever called him Maera. His Maera.

A name that meant Faith, in much the same way as his meant Pride.

The weary elder closed his eyes and attempted a deep, calming, breath. It was late and he needed to sleep. The rest of the castle had already long retired and it was blessedly quiet but he'd been somewhat uncharacteristically insomniac lately. It was almost as though his mind didn't know on which side of the Veil it preferred to be on. Though, that made a degree of sense, given the circumstances. He could no longer be in both as he once had.

He only hoped he wouldn't have to wait much longer. His mind might be conflicted…but his heart was elsewhere.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes:**

Read "Christmas in Kirkwall" if you need a refresher on what is going on thematically in this chapter.

**Sfumato**

Mariner apparently had a very loose definition of the word "temple," because Fenris was pretty sure that what he was looking at would more accurately be described as "ruins."

Rows upon rows of moss-covered stones piled high around what was probably once a central courtyard, but was now little more than an open-air platform nestled between old-growth trees and underbrush. A single wall still stood, about four feet high, along the westward bank of the site and the circular foundations of what were likely to be corner towers could still be seen poking above the soil. But aside from that, the Temple of the Elvhenildë, as he had called it, was little more than detritus scattered across the forest floor. Mariner, however, seemed quite pleased that they had finally arrived.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?"

Fenris raised an incredulous eyebrow. "Are you referring to the grass or to the rubble?"

Mariner laughed. "Neither of course." He waved his hand good-naturedly. "You'll see what I mean." But then he shrugged. "Maybe."

Fenris had to admit, he still wasn't completely sure of what they were doing out here and Mariner's newly adopted obtuseness wasn't helping. After leaving the road and heading northwest, it had been nothing but unbroken woods for miles. As one of the many valleys traversing the Frostback Mountains, trees remained relatively protected from the elements here and grew tall and thick despite the rocky shale soils. From time to time, they would also encounter the occasional archaeological traces of bygone peoples who had once made this region their home. Elves and men; who left behind roadside shrines and the remnants of huts, one-room chapels and grindstones for grain, and every now and again, a kind of small amulet that looked like a black slate pebble braided onto a leather cord. _Muin Durgen_, Mariner had called them. According to him, they were symbols of fertility and good harvest. Which was strange to Fenris. What need did valley-dwellers have of harvest tokens? There was no farmland here.

With careful, almost dance-like, steps, Fenris observed as Mariner began to walk a ritualistic path through the temple ruins. Turning his body slightly back and forth, he moved widdershins around the central circle; occasionally ducking his head down as though he were trying to get a better view of something through the trees or on the horizon. Fenris paused to watch the _ashvani_ Oracle do his work.

"Alright." He finally announced. "I believe I have found the safest path."

'Sure.' Fenris thought. 'Why not?' Safest path to what though?

Mariner then came to stand in the center of the rough-stone plaza, just a few feet from where Fenris was still waiting.

"Now." He addressed his companion. "I need you to do something for me, Fen."

"Fine." The other replied with a sigh.

"I need you to call Hawke."

Fenris narrowed his eyes. He knew this wasn't a joke but it was a vague and slightly painful request all the same. "In…what way?"

With needlessly tentative steps, Mariner approached the other elf; finally coming to a stop when he was barely a hairs-breadth from Fenris' chest. Quite uncomfortably close for the taller elf, in fact.

"What…are you doing?" He tried to take a step back, but Mariner immediately stepped forward to maintain the short distance.

"I'm sorry for this." He said. "I know this makes you uneasy but I promise it is necessary. Please, think of him, Fenris. Think of the last time you saw Hawke. Hold on to that. Now. As much as you can."

Fenris was almost about to protest, to warn the other off of this demand when the smaller elf suddenly grabbed onto his wrist, twining his fingers into the red scarf tied around his gauntlet. "Mariner! What are you…?"

The motion set him momentarily off balance and he stumbled on something behind his heel. He tried to catch himself, but then the world around him blurred and everything spiraled into chaos. Colors flowed into one another, like dripping paint on a wet canvas. The fabric of reality warped into folds draped on marble. Threads of consciousness tore and he was suddenly pulled through into a nothingness state. And then it all went black.

* * *

He was lying on a rug. Face down. His nose pressed into the wool, scratching against his cheek. His breath coming in warm puffs over his chin. Fenris could smell the distinct scent of evergreen and cedar thick in the air, and the heady musk of wood smoke and ashes. Soft, indistinct, lights twinkled in the background. He was warm; so delightfully warm it made him lethargic. His limbs felt sluggish, like he was trying to wake from a pleasant dream but would much rather just drift back into sleep for a while longer.

A voice caused him to stir and then the familiar feeling of a man's wide, strong, hands stroking his back. The man's voice was low and soothing; murmuring something about loveliness and desire. Hawke. It was Hawke's voice he heard, and he would know the mage's touch anywhere. It was the only sensation he didn't automatically recoil from.

'Oh, wasn't that a relief.' He found himself thinking. He was finally waking up from that terrible nightmare. The one where Hawke was dead and he was alone; trudging through a good-intentioned but foolish quest to either reclaim what he'd lost or just to put off the inevitable. How happy he was to be free of it. Hawke was here now, beckoning him back to the real world. It was about time, really.

Fenris turned his head over his shoulder to try and see where his lover was. The Winternight Tree glittered delicately above him and the hearth was overflowing with brightly crackling pine logs. The house really did look wonderful and he thought he should tell Hawke that. He hadn't, but he had meant to.

Hawke's shape moved forward but Fenris could only really see his gentle blue eyes and the quirk of his mouth. He felt the hand on his back slide to his hip and he arched into the contact with a wanton sigh. The heat and pressure of the room seemed to be soaking into his skin, into that wan smile; pulling him further and further into the abandonment of dreaming.

"Shh. Just be patient." Hawke's hands continued their slow slide down his body until they found the waistband of his leggings. Immediately, Fenris raised himself up onto his forearms and braced his knees slightly apart. It was his way of beckoning his lover closer; pleading with him for more. The mage's characteristic chuckle followed. The scents of mulled spice and wine and Winternight were intoxicating; rising up all around while he tried as valiantly as he could to remain in this perfect, present, moment.

Soft hands pulled him back, pressed him down, slipping his leggings over his hips and off his thighs. It didn't occur to Fenris that it was more like the clothing simply disappeared, since if felt like the supple leather was merely brushed off of his skin rather than peeled off of his body. But then Hawke was over him, fringes of his black hair hiding his eyes from view.

'He's pale.' Fenris thought. 'He's almost white against that black hair.' The elf rolled over and reached out, catching his lover's shoulders, pulling him down, burying his face against his skin and breathing in more of that calming scent. The mage laughed; a temperate vibration next to Fenris' ear. "You've got me, Fen." he murmured. It was enticing to hear the mage say his name and he bucked against him in response; knowing full well that the feel of his slighter body beneath him would excite his lover. It was also at times like these that Fenris continued to marvel at the very fact that he even had a lover; much less what could be considered a normal, healthy, intimate life. He'd always figured that if such a thing as regular sex were to come to pass, it would inevitably be weird and probably with someone who didn't really like him all that much. Definitely not with Hawke and certainly nothing like this.

When dexterous fingers tugged at his hair, Fenris tried burying his in Hawke's. For some reason, he felt rough and ungainly but the other didn't seem to mind. He was whispering softly again; little words and phrases meant to direct Fenris' mouth along his neck. Nuzzling at first, and then nipping at him tenderly, then hard at his little gasp of pleasure. A murmur of praise came next and Fenris immediately felt his world expand infinitely. He only passingly noticed that Hawke was the only one making any noise; mellow sighs, muted words, careful instructions to take care of the rest of their clothes until they were lying side by side. For a moment, it also occurred to him that something was a little off about the entire situation. He remembered their Winternight encounter quite distinctly and it hadn't gone precisely like this.

His brows drew together and he reached out to touch the mage again; to get a more reassuring sense of his presence and physicality. Something moved beneath his palm but it was hard to say whether it was real flesh or just some kind of memory of flesh. He hesitated for a moment; the dream momentarily flickering into something terrifying. For a brief second, it wasn't Hawke pushing him down, but Danarius. It wasn't his lover's fingers that settled against his chest, but his master's. The room was different; filled with damask and velvet and smelling of sea salt.

He almost panicked before the images and sensations shifted again; easily and without pretense. It was Hawke who held him once more and Hawke who was now straddling his hips, sliding down to tease him with a few tantalizing strokes.

Consciousness fled from him as Hawke nipped at his neck and allowed Fenris to re-memorize his body through the fog of his subconscious. His mind, however, seemed to make something of a return when Fenris realized that the mage was arched against him; his back to his chest and his legs spread over his thighs. "Now, Fen." he breathed in that low, bedroom, voice. It was an order sheathed in silk. Hawke's strong hands wrapped around him, gripped gently, and guided him inside his body.

Tight, hot, tight, Maker be damned. Fenris couldn't recall ever having felt anything so good. His lover's body squeezed him in torturously slow increments. As far as he knew, this was the first time he'd ever been inside another and it was beyond anything he'd imagined. He clung to the mage desperately. There was no way he was going to let him go now. He was here. Safe and happy and in his arms. He was not dead, not gone. He was alive! He could feel him! Hawke arched against him with a low whimper of pain, sending lashes of fire through Fenris' belly at the sound. And then he moaned. No man should sound like that. No man should feel this good.

At his low command, Fenris started moving; sliding in and out of the mage's body in a halting, unsure, rhythm. It was too tight to move fast but he didn't really want to. He could feel every shiver and contraction, and wondered if this was how Hawke felt every time they'd made love before this. Fenris' hand fumbled down the flat belly, encouraged by another, and wrapped his fingers around the hard column of his lover's erection. When he slid upwards it caused the other to spasm around him. "Fen!"

"Mmmmm." Hawke rocked hard against him, pushing back with no small measure of his strength. Fenris' hips began to speed up; the memory of their coupling seeming to ease the way inside of him, opening the other for him, making their pairing more in tune until Fenris could balance himself and drive in hard and fast. He could hear Hawke's breath escaping in little heated gasps. His body squirmed against him, shoving downward until Fenris hit something that made his lover really cry out for the first time. He didn't pretend to be in control anymore; the mage was pounding against him, forcing him in, clasping him inside his body so that they would move together just so.

Fenris felt his breath grow ragged. It was too much. Everything was crashing together too quickly. Sharp nails dug into his hips, holding him still and buried to the root in that hot, slick, passage. Something warm slid down from those nails and onto the rug. Blood. Hawke had drawn droplets of blood, which was then followed by another low, growling, moan. He tightened, a hard shudder passing down his spine. And then soon, another. It was just this side of painful; a vice around Fenris' manhood. He buried his face against Hawke's shoulder, stifling his own loud cries as he exploded inside him. Too hot, too good, too far, too much…

Confusion overtook him. Fenris' body and mind were being wracked with sensation. Everything around him both moved too fast to keep up with and yet seemed like it existed in slow motion. The comfort of Hawke's presence faded and within moments Fenris could no longer feel his touch. He was still in the mansion in Kirkwall though, in the living room at Winternight, but the room was changing in such a way that was reminiscent of a broken mirror; reflecting facets of his experiences with all kinds of different angles. First he saw things one way and then he saw them another.

'Like trying to look through a crystal,' he thought briefly.

Fenris couldn't have known how exceedingly right he was. Unfortunately, he was immediately distracted by a dangerous shift in the atmosphere around him. His senses were alerting him to trouble.

The sounds of a fight echoed down the main hallway. Shouts and curses accompanied clattering strikes that shook the walls. Cracks began to form in the plaster and through those cracks, a bit of eerie grey light was shining through. Fenris instinctively placed his hand against his chest and was pleased to find his breastplate already there. He was completely dressed, in fact, just as he had been previously; in his coat and armor. Hawke was nowhere to be seen. He was alone in the living room. The safe, familiar, feelings of the mage already evaporating in the cold reality of desolation.

With an angry growl he realized that this must be the Fade: that everything he was experiencing was being drawn from his memories and reconstructed from his thoughts. He guessed that Mariner must have initiated the transition but he had no idea how or even exactly when really. He hadn't been asleep; he was relatively certain of that. So how then could they be in the Fade? Traversing the Veil physically was usually impossible. Moments ago, they had been standing in the woods and he didn't recall seeing any sort of magical gateway or anything of that nature. But then again, nothing in this realm ever made sense and it could change so quickly and so ethereally that one would never be sure if the things they saw were actually there or not. It was easy to be forgetful here. He felt solid and real enough though; very unlike the last time he had journeyed through the Veil in Hawke's company. He looked about himself.

His sword was still on his back, so he quickly drew it from the scabbard and took up a defensive stance. Another clang and a howl from the entryway erupted throughout the imagined estate. The pitched battle sounded like it was near the front door and since Fenris already had a deep knowledge of just how this place was laid out, he made his way out from the room he was in and into the side hall. From there, he could cross the parlor, skirt the upper foyer, and arrive at the rear of the main lobby. It was an easy path and one he'd taken quite often at night whenever he hadn't been able to sleep and didn't want to wake Hawke. What he saw in the threshold, however, stopped him in his tracks.

Mariner was fighting Danarius.

The arrogant old man was a horror to behold; a magister swathed in blue, purple, and gold, wielding a star-topped staff. His eyes were pinpoints of sickly grey light and he seemed to sneer with every wide arc of his arm. Hateful red magic flowed all around them. Mariner, however, countered him blithely; meeting each crushing blow with a wave of his hand or a stomp of his foot. To Fenris' shock, his erstwhile companion had also taken on a bizarrely supernatural and menacing appearance. To go with his whitened hair, he also now glowered down with clear white eyes; his fingernails had turned black and were ridged like razor-sharp falcates. And from his head, the last of the auburn streaks in his hair appeared to have risen upwards, defying gravity, and twisted together into a crown of antlers wider than his shoulders. He was less elf now that umbral spirit and unlike anything Fenris had ever seen.

Danarius, however, noticed him first.

"My little Fenris…" the parched voice hissed as the figure turned to greet him. "…how I have missed you."

Fenris knew that Danarius was dead. He knew that this wasn't really him, that it couldn't be him, but the presence of his old master seemed to affect him just as powerfully as he had in life. Fenris felt his stomach drop, his heart begin to pound, and his mouth go dry. This was a ghost that had haunted him relentlessly since before he could remember.

"I killed you once, Danarius." He spat. "I can kill you again."

"And again and again and again…" The creature replied with a nauseating smile. "But you'll never be rid of me…will you?"

"Fenris." Mariner cautioned from the far side of the room. "Be careful. It is not Danarius you are fighting here, but yourself."

"What is that supposed to mean?" He growled.

"We are passing into the Fade and it is grasping for you. You mustn't let it drag you down."

"And how do I do that?"

Mariner circled the entity, the one which still wore Danarius' face. "What do you see?"

Fenris' fingers clenched onto the grip of his sword but he stayed his hand for the time being. As much as he wanted to cut this likeness to ribbons, he was still on unsure footing.

"My old master. This is Danarius. Tevinter magister of Castellum Tenebris and the one who is responsible for burning the lyrium markings into my skin. Among other things."

"And what became of him?"

Fenris bristled. "He's dead. I crushed his throat when he returned to tame me again."

Mariner nodded, subtly enticing the spirit away from the other elf and closer to him with a vulnerable turn of his head. It caused the antlers to sweep widely, however, and there was a strange bell-like tinkling sound that followed. "And why does he come for you now then?"

Fenris was honestly at a loss for words. He knew what Mariner was asking; not why an ostensibly dead Danarius would come searching for him but why the Fade would see fit to attack them with Danarius' mien. In other words, why choose this form to combat them over any other.

Unfortunately, the answer to that question was not something Fenris wanted to speak out loud. Or ever give any kind of concrete reality to in any way.

He didn't want to admit that he sometimes still felt Danarius' touch when Hawke caressed him.

He didn't want to accept that he was sometimes still awoken late into the night by the purr of Danarius' voice even when it was Hawke who lay next to him.

He didn't want to confess that he sometimes still experienced Danarius' weight against his back, and his master's angry cock plunging into him, even when Hawke made love to him.

That the most precious thing in his life was indelibly stained by his most despised.

That dark void still existed. It still threatened to well up from the depths of his soul and consume him; to strip him of everything he had come to love with the kind of greedy, destructive, hunger only hate could give birth to.

And that was exactly what was happening now.

Mariner, however, did not actually seem as though he had asked the question to get an answer. Rather, that it was rhetorical in the way that he had intended to invoke an emotion in Fenris and allow the Fade to give solid form to the pain. Because, just as soon as the hatred and the anguish threatened to burst out of him, the other acted, swiftly and decisively to vanquish it.

The dexterous _ashvani_ leapt forward on nimble toes, snagging Danarius' impressive armor on those keenly sharpened nails. Without hesitation, he tore it from the creature with a flourish. Instantly, it came away; dissolving into nothingness as wisps and threads swirled back into the ether of the Fade. Next, he darted forward again and knocked the staff from his hands. The spirit snarled and tried to recoil, but to Fenris' astonishment, it did not seem capable of avoiding the white elf. It tried to intimidate them with words that dripped venom and an imposing demeanor, but each time Mariner struck it, it could only cower in response. He knocked is sideways. The high collar and marks of station followed and were dashed to the floor.

Piece by piece it was picked apart. Piece by piece the fragile, twisted, body of a powerless old man was revealed. Within moments, there was nothing left in the room but the two elves and the frail, shriveled, form of a Demon of Despair.

It still wore the face of Fenris' former master but both its body and its manner had begun to disintegrate.

Mariner stepped back; his eyes cleared and darkened back to the passerine blue they usually were, the great rack of stag-like antlers unraveled and fell back into the auburn locks woven throughout his snow-white hair, and when his hand came to rest on Fenris' shoulder, the nails were normal again.

"Now what do you see?" Mariner's voice was soft and gentle.

Fenris lowered his sword but kept a pensive grip on the pommel. "A wretch." He replied. "The worm he always was. But a worm still digging holes through my brain, I think. I had hoped that…had hoped that Hawke would finally be the one to kill it."

"Hawke can't kill this demon, Fenris. It's not his demon."

Of course, Fenris knew that. But he didn't believe that he could kill it either. It was so much a part of him.

The figure of Danarius leered at them; it's toothy mouth twisting into a vicious grin. But its form continued to collapse in on itself, melting into the carpet of the hallway like a tarry black puddle. With a flash, the room refracted for a brief second and instead of the familiar ambiance of the Hawke-Arnell estate in Hightown, Fenris saw the front entryway of Castellum Tenebris; his master's labyrinthine mansion in Minrathous. The old familiar portraits on the walls, the musty smell of mold and magic, and the lines of iron chains against the sideboard where "disobedient" slaves were kept in public view. He shuddered and the façade vanished once more, returning to the low lamp-light of his shared home with Liam Hawke.

"Fenris?"

He didn't respond; too caught up in his thoughts to even acknowledge his name. He was not aware that the brief change around him had been observed by anyone other than himself.

"Does Hawke know?" Mariner interjected, drawing Fenris' attention at last.

"Does Hawke know what?"

The dust between them had hardly settled but the horror of Mariner's words was nearly enough to shatter whatever remained of his illusion of sanity.

"That he is as Danarius to you?"

If not for the danger, Fenris might have given in to the grief then and there.


	4. Chapter 4

**Unione**

Solas was uneasy. Something was disrupting the Fade and he couldn't quite get his bearings on where it was coming from. The spirits native to Skyhold's considerably variable landscape had gone eerily silent and were starting to avoid him even in instances where he actively sought them out. One such spirit however, an incarnation of wonder, had been the only entity to respond to him at all when tentatively pressed for information.

"Frightful dawn on the black horizon." It had said. "Endless moors begin the Schism. No more in exile, the wolf pack devours the moon."

He didn't understand. This wasn't to say that spirits weren't often cryptic but he'd long grown accustomed to interpreting their strange rhetorical flourishes and symbolic way of describing what they were experiencing. But this…he couldn't make out. Even Cole was being unusually obtuse at the moment and it was frustrating him.

The castle had gone quiet and subdued once again. With the Inquisitor and his preferred party away on yet another errand to the south, Solas now had the time to really reflect and to ponder his next moves. He leaned back in his chair, gazing unseeing at the rotunda above; thoroughly lost in his thoughts.

Perhaps there was a new rift nearby that he hadn't yet caught sight of or a troublesome spirit blundering around in an unfamiliar area. Or perhaps, as he dared not hope, the Hart was drawing closer again. Spirits always became restless and animated whenever he was nearby and as soon as the butterflies began to appear in his dreams, he knew that instability in the Fade was sure to follow. But if this was Maera…where was he? Why hadn't he seen him?

With a huff, Solas got to his feet and fetched his staff, traveling hood, and cloak. He'd had enough of pursuits in dreams. It was time to find out if he could see better with the two eyes in his head rather than the third in his mind.

* * *

"Hawke. Is. Not. Danarius. How dare you…" Fenris seethed.

Mariner raised his hands in a gesture of capitulation. "That's not what I meant, Fenris. Of course I know that Hawke isn't like that. But this memory is yours. A beautiful moment captured in time that is precious to you beyond measure. And yet, it is the face of your master that assaults us. There is a reason that you see Danarius here and I suspect that this is a demon that has haunted you for a very long time."

Fenris stood in thoughtful silence for several seconds. "Mariner?" He finally replied. "Why _are_ we here?"

"Traversing the Fade is no simple thing." The _ashvani_ sighed. "In order for us to be able to cross into the Beyond together, we needed a bridge; a link between the waking world of light and the shadow of the dreaming. And that, you have provided. The presence of this house, these rooms and furnishings, and of Danarius; they're reflections of your mind that connect your memories with your lived reality. Both truth and fiction, real and unreal."

"We _are_ in the Fade then."

"Yes."

Fenris took a pensive breath. "Fine. But I don't see why all this had to come from me."

"Because you and Hawke share this memory. He will be drawn to what is familiar; what is meaningful to him, and the more connections we can bring forward between the two of you, the easier he will be to find."

Mariner stepped forward with gentle repose and laid a comforting hand onto Fenris' forearm. The elder elf scowled at him but did not pull away. "I fear, however," Mariner added. "That this will not be the last time the specter of your old master will come with claws pointed at your throat. This fight may just be beginning."

It was certainly not what Fenris wanted to hear but if it meant getting Hawke back, he'd kill Danarius a thousand times and then a thousand times more if that's what it took to see his love alive again. Let the demon have whatever form it wanted. He wouldn't just die to save Hawke; if it came to it, he'd live in eternal torment alongside him if he couldn't.

"What do we do now?" He asked.

"Now." Mariner said. "We see what's on the other side of that door."

By which he meant the front door: the high and wide central entrance to the Hawke-Arnell estate. Outside of which ought to be Hightown, the wealthier district of Kirkwall where he and Hawke had made their home. But Fenris had no reservations in believing that was not what was out there in this case. Something flickered at the edges of his vision. An image he thought he'd seen before but couldn't quite place. A memory of one of the most significant times he had crossed that threshold. The night Hawke had first taken him to his bed.

Almost immediately, the main fireplace in the grand hall roared to life. Everything else descended into late evening gloom and the sound of a large hound barking echoed loudly throughout the house.

He heard his own words reverberating in the back of his throat.

"This hate…I thought I had gotten away from it. But it dogs me no matter where I go."

"To feel it again, to know it was they who planted it inside me…it was too much to bear. But I didn't come here to burden you further…."

But then… "You don't need to leave, Fenris."

It was a night that he both cherished and regretted: what he wouldn't give for it to have gone differently and yet how he wouldn't change the experience for anything in the world. It had been a mistake to go to Hawke that night and it had been a mistake to leave him. He'd never truly revealed to the mage what he'd seen and felt as they lay together, and had always hoped that Hawke wouldn't ask, but now he couldn't help but think that his reticence had only made the dark tangle inside of him worse. And now it was strong enough to destroy him.

Fenris glanced over at the long bench near the hearth before turning and glancing up the stairs. He half expected to see Hawke there already; coming down to greet him. But the landing was empty. The memory began to ebb.

Mariner continued to wait patiently near the front door, watching as Fenris took in the sight of his and Hawke's home; looking much like it did as he had left it a few days ago. There was a certain irony in having come all this way north only to, essentially, have gone to the same place he had just departed. From the house where Hawke should have been, that now only held his memory; to his memory, the only house where Hawke now remained.

"Time to go." The _ashvani_ prompted.

Fenris nodded and turned wordlessly back to him. With a soft click, Mariner flipped the lock and allowed the door to drift open. Beyond was what Fenris had feared it might be. Not the bustling Hightown neighborhood that was usually outside their door, but rather, a room in mirror image of the foyer they were in. But this one was clearly not a room that belonged to Hawke's estate. This was the old, run-down, mansion he'd taken from Danarius all those years ago. The manor that had been his base of operations for the first several years after his arrival in Kirkwall, when _he_ was the ghost haunting the hallways.

Without hesitation, or much sense as far as Fenris was concerned, Mariner stepped over the threshold and into the vast open space of the main gallery. Everything was as rank and decayed as Fenris remembered. Tattered, moldy, banners clung to their flagposts, a large landscape painting that once hung below the upper stairs had fallen to the floor and split into pieces, and muddy debris still littered the floor in every direction. Floor tiles were shattered all over the place or simply missing; while bits of glass and candle wax seemed to be the only things holding the structure together. If finding Hawke meant plucking at the threads of their meaningful connections, Fenris wasn't at all surprised to find them here. A lot had happened in this ruin.

"I can feel him here." Mariner stated out loud to the room. "We're getting closer."

Fenris followed the other elf into the dining hall and then towards the sitting area in front of the central fireplace. When Mariner took a moment to run his fingertips over the back of a threadbare chair, Fenris responded. "If Hawke is looking for me or for some…memory…of me, I'm not shocked he would have come here."

"What is this place?" Mariner looked up curiously.

"It's…my old home. Well, where I lived anyway; when I met Hawke. Danarius had been using it as a temporary household while he was waiting to see if his hired mercenaries could retrieve me from the city. When they failed, he fled back to Minrathous and I took over the house on the off-chance he came back and tried again."

"It…It's…awful."

Fenris chuckled. "Yes, it was not in good shape, even then. Hawke used to try and convince me to leave it and move in with him. After we…started seeing each other, I mean. But I never could. I used to tell myself that it was because I couldn't stand the idea of losing my freedom again; even in just a small way. Now I think it was because I couldn't let go of my chains. It…it was all I had, strange as that may sound to you. Hawke's promise of something more was too far into the unknown."

"He was here." Mariner repeated, lightly tapping the high-back chair he stood behind. "I think he was waiting for you to come back."

"It stands to reason." Fenris answered. "I would often find him here, waiting to speak with me. But I take it that he is no longer here now?"

"No. You didn't come. I think he went up that way though. Where do those stairs lead?"

"To the upstairs bedrooms. I'm pretty sure I can guess why he did that."

"Be careful, Fenris." Mariner cautioned. "We're not alone in here. There's something ominous in this house. Angry. The kind of pain that doesn't forget."

Fenris wasn't about to let on just how much he understood the other's warnings. There was, indeed, a darker shadow that moved across the dilapidated floors and up along cracked and crumbling walls. A shadow that knew what it meant to crave vengeance and to make no distinction between the one who deserved it and the one who looked like he did. He raised his sword to his shoulder again and began to make his way up the stairs with Mariner shortly behind him.

The hallway was long and winding, but he still knew the way by heart. He was walking towards his old bedroom, the room where he and Hawke had rekindled their passion after reconciling in the wake of Danarius' death. Nor did it escape Fenris' notice that he was also walking in the anamnesis of their entire relationship; step by step through a past life that would, with any luck, lead him to the future one. When he reached it, he tried the familiar door, and then tried it again. It was locked and wouldn't open.

With a terse sound, Fenris dropped the tip of his sword back towards the floor and turned his shoulder into the lintel. He hadn't remembered there ever being a lock on this door but if he had to molder it to get it open, then that's what he would do. He shoved once, hard, but nothing budged. He shoved it again; twisting the knob to see if it would at least offer him some give. Nothing. He braced himself and prepared for a third push; thinking he might end up having to bull-rush the thing. But suddenly, it gave and the door tilted inwards. With that, Fenris abruptly found himself in an even worse situation than he could have anticipated.

The old mansion had vanished just as easily as it had appeared. He was not standing in his former bedroom; not as such. Rather, he immediately recognized Danarius' personal chambers; the one in the estate in Minrathous. The transition jarred him so unexpectedly that he almost fell across the threshold; catching himself on the edge of a wooden frame near the foot of the obnoxiously large bed. He recoiled, bile instantly rising in his throat and terror stinging his eyes. It was a slave rack; replete with chains and bolted leather cuffs. It was a slave rack he knew all too well.

Fenris reeled. Mariner was nowhere to be seen. The door behind him was shut and locked. He wasn't holding his sword. In fact, he wasn't even wearing his armor. He seemed to be dressed in a simple orange and red tunic with black leggings. Colors, as he now suddenly remembered, Danarius had quite liked on him. Panic began to set in. Why was he here? How would Hawke have even known to search out a place like this? How was he going to get out!? He needed to get out! Now!

Then, his heart dropped and his throat went dry.

"Oh, Fenris. Predictable as always."

* * *

The wooded valley was rather quaint, or it might have been if Solas had been in any mood to appreciate it. Instead, he slogged through the thick peak tussocks and low-slung bushes with a sense of purpose. From the opposite rise, he had seen something in the woods he had not noticed before. Which, for him, was doubly concerning. Skyhold had been his home for a very long time, throughout several ages prior, and he knew every inch of the surrounding valleys like he knew the Fade superimposed beneath them. But he did not recognize the stone circle and peaked walls he had spied from several kilometers away. It looked like a ruin but a ruin of what, he wondered. There were no other castles, temples, or fortifications for days in any direction.

When he finally came upon the base of the tree he'd been using as a waypoint, he slowed to a tense walk. The sight before him nearly set him aback with amazement.

Butterflies. Bright, blazing-orange, butterflies covered every conceivable surface of the remnants of an ancient tower. They whirled overheard in delicate spiral patterns against the wind and alighted onto the moss-covered walls and boulders of what was now clearly once an Elvhen ruin.

'But how could that be?' He thought. The Elvhen had never built such a thing here that he knew of.

But there it was. The remains of masterful stone filigrees and lattice archways with carved leaves and branches jutted up from the undergrowth. A stone plaza that had once held a mosaic of colored gems sat unevenly on the ground and the bases of what were likely pillars were still arranged in geomantic shapes moving outward from the center. The only truly confusing thing now was that it was difficult to discern old columns from rotted tree stumps and it gave the impression of a congress of forgotten seats all hidden out in the woods where no one would think to look for them.

Solas cautiously stretched out his hand as one of the largest butterflies fluttered down to rest on his fingers. It turned its head towards him, opening and closing its wings in a slow, deliberate, motion. And then took off again; happily flapping upwards to rejoin the morass of color and orange-red light dappling the sky.

But this was not the Fade and Solas was immediately concerned. He had only ever seen these creatures in one other circumstance and that circumstance had only ever come to pass in dreams. These were the fragmented memories that trailed the White Hart but memories had no substance. Memories might be metaphorical but they were not real butterflies. These were _real_ butterflies.

Careful not to accidentally step on any of them, the elder elf made his way further into the ruin and towards the plaza. If the Ancients had left any explanation of their presence here, it likely would be carved somewhere near the center of the structure. Hopefully, any inscriptions were still at least somewhat protected from the elements and not worn completely off or covered over by lichen and dirt. But the state of the stones did not inspire much hope in him for a clear answer.

As he stepped up onto the platform, Solas pushed his hood back and steadied his staff. This was an unquiet forest and he could be in danger from any number of things both physical and not. But everything remained oddly serene; butterflies dancing overhead, through the trees, and birds chirping in the distance. Nothing even seemed all that concerned for the frozen patches of snow on the ground nor the chill in the air that let it be known that winter was still well and truly upon them. He sighed and started searching.

An hour or more passed and he found nothing. No useful direction markers, no dedications, no images indicating what the original building might have been for. He was getting discouraged. Nothing he tried seemed to work.

In a fit of pique, he looked up at the nearest throng of butterflies and shouted across the plaza to them. "I don't suppose _you_ have any idea what I am missing?"

To his utter astonishment, the butterflies responded.

A tumult through the air and a wild whirligig over his head and the entire teeming mass flew down to settle on one particularly pointed looking mound of grass and weeds. Picking at it with their legs, Solas quickly got the impression that he needed to clear it away and see what lay beneath. Which, of course he did, quickly and efficiently.

It was a statue…of Fen'Harel!

Solas balked and took a step back from it. The butterflies, on the other hand, immediately swarmed over the carved stone wolf; bouncing and flittering like madcap circus performers. From beneath their trembling feet, he could see writing along the base of the figure and tentatively approached to get a better view of it. 

_Even on the burning ground,_

_Life awaits the Sun._

Well, that certainly wasn't a sentiment he remembered anyone attributing to him before.

Or, they had, but only when…

Out of a sudden sheer sense of terrible foreboding, he slowly turned and drew, with his line of sight, a straight arrow from where the icon sat in the mess of dried grass to another equally buried shape on the other side of the plaza. There were two figures here. One on the west end of the circle, the wolf, and another on the eastern apex. Solas took an unsteady breath. There was only one possibility for a counterpart icon and that meant that this ruin could only have been one thing.

A temple of the Elvhenildë.

A sacred grove from the time before the fall.

A place wherein he did _not_ belong.

Not anymore.

He didn't need to look beneath the furrows to know that it was the image of a stag on the far side of him. He didn't have to read the letters there to know what the inscription said. 

_Even on the burning ground,_

_Life awaits the Sun._

He whispered the words quietly to his attendant audience of insect philosophers. 

_E'er no matter seasons round,_

_Death was all but Done._


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes:**

Heavy themes ahead! Involving rape, slavery, and sexual trauma. If you'd rather skip this chapter, please do so, and pick things up with the next one. - Nas

**Raptio, Rapere**

How long had Fenris spent in this room? There was no way to tell. Time has ceased to mean anything.

Kirkwall didn't exist.

His freedom didn't exist.

Hawke didn't exist.

He was home. In his master's estate. Right where he belonged.

"On your knees, boy. And get that tunic off. I want to see you, pet."

There had been a time in his life when the response to this demand had been automatic. He'd simply strip himself of his clothes in the most efficient manner possible and submit to his master's touch without question. How Danarius had loved to caress him. To run his fingers over the lyrium markings as prideful evidence of his mastery over both magic and his most dangerous, formidable, slave. These salacious strokes then often led to groping, which might then become a distinctly sexual fondle. As his master so desired, Fenris would be ordered to kneel, to brace himself on something and bend over, or even worse, to lie down.

He'd hated that demand the most. To be forced to face his master as he took his pleasure out of Fenris' body, in whatever way he wanted in the moment. He had also long learned how to school his features into benign neutrality so as not to give away his revulsion but having to watch his master's face during such an act made it extraordinarily difficult. Danarius didn't like it when he closed his eyes and would often slap him if he did, so his options were limited either way. Sometimes Danarius even kissed him but Fenris could never bring himself to respond to it. Instead, he just held still and waited; hoping to distract himself with meaningless thoughts and to pass the time quickly.

"I said, on your knees."

Fenris gave a short, jerky, nod and dropped onto the edge of the bed. He could feel his master's presence behind him and a shiver ran down his spine as he felt cold fingers begin to tug at his tunic.

His shirt dropped to the floor and he felt Danarius' hand grip onto the back of his neck; not to subdue him really but rather to feel Fenris' muscles tensing beneath his skin as he was pressed forward and not-so-subtly directed onto all fours.

Danarius' voice began to comment on how good his skin felt, how like silk, embroidered with the design of his liking. His very own signature on a masterpiece. Fenris shuddered in response but tried not to let it show. If Danarius ever became acutely aware of his disgust, he would be inclined to beat it out of him first before continuing. The low, brittle, murmuring continued.

"Such a good boy, aren't you? What shall I do with you, then?"

Fenris couldn't answer. Tears stung his eyes and the sickness turned his stomach but he couldn't get himself to move. Why couldn't he resist?

"Ironic, isn't it?" Danarius was saying. "Trying to think of your new lover but always coming back to your memories of me. Wanting him but accepting me."

Fenris froze. What? What did he just say?

"What lovely chains you now wear."

It jolted him back into a state of semi-awareness. This was not Minrathous. This was not his master's bedroom on the island estate. This couldn't be Danarius.

A pair of leather manacles slithered around his wrists and Fenris felt as the form of his master began to bind him with straps. In short order, he was tied to the foot of the bed, kneeling at the edge, bowed face first into the coverlet with his arms outstretched.

'Strange.' His thoughts began to skitter away again. Danarius had never before seen fit to tie him down before raping him. Rather, his master had always taken somewhat perverse pleasure in taking him unbound as a demonstration of his power: reveling in Fenris' easy obedience to his commands.

Once finished, Danarius sat back to admire his work. Fenris, for his part, continued to hold still under his master's silent examination, outwardly calm, but inside he finally beginning to break. His thighs tensed; fingers clenched with white-knuckled strength around the ties that secured him to the bed. The thick cords of his neck were starting to tremble, his pulse quickening, and his breathing stuttered.

"You're mine tonight. So very mine." Danarius announced in a gleeful tone.

Fenris' nostrils flared as he tried to take in a steadying breath. A damp kiss pressed into his shoulder before hungry fingers began to pull at the ties of his leggings; peeling them off of his legs with impatient clumsiness. A rough palm immediately slid down over his backside, followed by a pleased noise from the old man behind him. The touches remained furtive, however; never quite direct enough to truly entice him and never quite delicate enough not to inspire disgust. But when two strong hands hooked into the juncture between his hips and his thighs, Fenris was suddenly panicked.

"Let's see how you give in to the dominance of your true master." The voice was still that of Danarius, but now with a deeper, darker, layering of something else. As though two people were speaking in synchronous harmony through the fog of his subconscious.

Fenris swallowed and closed his eyes so tightly that tiny creases appeared between his eyebrows. He forced his mind to discipline its thoughts and pulled his attention away from the sensation of someone, of something, prodding at him; encouraging him to open up and to submit to the assault. Danarius continued to scrabble at his hips, trying to mount him; attempting to penetrate him with sharp, painful, lunges.

"You like it when Hawke does this to you, don't you?" The voice hissed. "When he masters you."

Master.

Hawke.

_Liam_.

Fenris descended into his memory. The terrifying words began to fade and the pain diffused. His body relaxed and his fear liquified as it was wicked away by the flashback. He was in their bedroom, at home in Kirkwall. The hearth was burning brightly and the room was warm and quiet. He buried his face into the rumpled sheets and took a deep breath of the scent of sandalwood and pine smoke. It was the perfect smell, native to cotton, and it always reminded him of comfortable nights in Hawke's arms; laid against his chest and snuggled into his neck as he tickled at the scars near the mage's collar bone. Listening to his lover's slow, deep, breaths as he slept. The soft fabric ghosted over his cheek and across the ridge of his ear as he turned his head and smiled. A familiar chuckle drifted over him as wide, warm, hands kneaded into his lower back.

The shape behind him shifted. No more crinkled, blotched skin or rounded shoulders but stronger features; a lean, elegant, sinuous body curved at the midsection to arc over him. Not to pin him. Not to hold him down. But to shelter him and to tease him with barely denied restraint.

It was Hawke who had bound him to the bed but he had allowed it. The mage was leaving in the morning; to travel north to the fortress at Skyhold on word that the Inquisition had need of him. Varric's letter had been urgent but Hawke hadn't left immediately. Instead, he had opted to remain at home for one more night and on that night, he'd taken his time with his lover. Gentle, precious, time.

The braided leather was tight around Fenris' wrists and looped, in several repeated circles, through the carved curlicues in the headboard. Altogether, it wasn't actually strong enough to stop him had he truly wanted to get free but that wasn't the point. Fingertips set against his thighs once more; a mild touch really but Fenris parted his legs further in response. It was his way of teasing Hawke from this position and it never failed to have the desired effect on the mage.

The memory spasmed into fractured shards of harshly colored light. Danarius had struck him and the sting of the blow caused his attention to falter. Unwanted thoughts dashed back through his mind and he grappled desperately to control them. His master pinning him down, his cheek hurting as the stiff fibers of the bedspread chafed his skin. The horrific, unrelenting, pain until he thought his body might tear in two. But he did not surrender. He would not submit. Not again. Not ever again.

Fenris threw himself against the chains of his memory; the bonds of trauma that imprisoned him. He arched his back and snarled a vulgar oath. This world, this vision, belonged to him and he would no more allow this demon to claim it, to steal what little was precious to him, than he would allow his body to be claimed again by cruelty.

Hawke was talking to him once again; tender, loving, words that complimented his equally solicitous, compassionate touch. When reddened lips brushed his neck, Fenris turned his head once more; yielding to his lover's desires without resistance. He parted his own lips then and offered a subdued moan.

Hawke's hands continued to sweep over him in wanting caresses that left Fenris breathless with need. He was already desperately excited; chest tight and cock hard. He observed, through lowered eyelashes, as Hawke rose up behind him and continued his passionate massage down onto the backs of his legs and over his calves; entranced by the sight of his beautiful companion so enamored with his body.

The mage then lowered himself onto Fenris' back and he felt the immediate return of his tension. This was the moment he had always struggled with and the elf instinctively began to pull at his bonds. The fear rose as the fight did. Danarius had returned; his master's erection nestled against him and his hateful, insulting words lashed his exposed skin.

"Hold still you little worm."

"I will punish you for this; miserable, ungrateful, child."

"Worthless elf rat. Stop that."

Danarius' calloused hands wrenched him backwards, trying to force him into position and shove inside of him with ungainly imprecision. But Fenris had already regained his foothold on rationality and instead of railing against the agony and the confusion, he denied them. He denied everything about them. Danarius was dead. The past was gone. Hawke was alive. It was Hawke who embraced him in the warm cocoon of night. It was Hawke who kissed him and pleasured him. It was Hawke who loved him.

His past and his present were not the same. And he would split them apart if it took his last breath.

Hawke stroked him dexterously as he continued to mouth at Fenris' neck; eliciting a pleased groan from his lover. The bonds melted away and Fenris happily rolled onto his back; wrapping his arms around Hawke's shoulders and pulling him flush against his body. It was bliss as the mage suckled his throat and rocked into him.

When Fenris twisted to the side, not to escape but to give his lover better access, Hawke huffed his approval. The simple, spontaneous, gesture meant more to him that he could ever describe.

"Do you know how much I love marking you." Hawke whispered against Fenris' ear. His lover's marks, not Danarius'. "All I have to do is look at you and see the evidence that you're mine."

"Yours." Fenris gasped, tremors running through him. "Always yours…even when…I couldn't tell you."

"I know, Fen. I've always known."

The mage left his marks, dozens of them on the tanned, tender, flesh. Sliding down Fenris' body, he laved the smooth skin of his chest with his tongue and took great pleasure in the sound of Fenris' reluctant sobs. Each touch, each new caress, drove them both closer and closer to the edge.

Fenris was shaking ceaselessly, writhing underneath his lover like a wild, feral, thing. But Hawke knew how to how best to tame his capricious elf and, with a knowing smirk, slid down; pushing Fenris' legs open with his knee and taking his erection into his mouth. Fenris instantly cried out, pushing up violently and wantonly demanding more.

An inchoate mix of please, curses, and variations on Hawke's name tumbled out of his mouth. But the mage held him firmly to the bed, thwarting his attempts to thrust upwards as he took several long pulls on the hot, hard, cock. Fenris moaned. He would finish him in mere moments if he insisted on such a pace. Then, Hawke let go and sat up, tipping on his heels.

"Liam!" Fenris' voice broke as he shamelessly, helplessly, arched his hips towards his lover's general direction. "Please! Don't stop! I need you."

Even as he shook with his own urgency, Hawke leaned over his beloved captive and kissed him; delighted when Fenris eagerly, hungrily, returned it. "Don't worry," He promised, mouthing the words against the other's lips. "I'm not through with you yet."

Fenris whimpered but held tightly onto every sensation. Nothing could unmoor him from this moment. He refocused on the familiar scent of their love-making, on the specifics of each kind of touch to each part of his body. On the particular way that Hawke liked to nibble at his right ear; always his right, so that he went from the lobe at the base all the way to the tip. He recalled how Hawke would prepare him for their union; by gently penetrating him with first one finger and then a second. Sometimes he would use the oil in the nightstand to loosen and slicken him, sometimes he would use magic. He always tried to do the latter secretively, of course, but Fenris always noticed. He just didn't mind it though and actually found it cute how much Hawke appeared to be pleased by seeming to get away with his little deception every time.

And then the mage hit that place inside of him that only he seemed to know about.

Fenris' reaction was all he could have hoped for. There was a long, soft, unsteady moan. Another finger and Fenris threw his head back against the mattress; white hair, damp with sweat, falling against the white sheet.

It was almost more than Hawke could take, seeing Fenris like that, watching him tremble and undulate with each push of his fingers against that sensitive spot. When the mage finally released him and Fenris felt his lover's manhood against his entrance, he sighed and closed his eyes again.

"Yes," Hawke heard, barely audible. "Please, Liam."

Fenris never had to ask twice.

A hard push, there was a second of resistance, and then he felt the mage slide into him. Fenris cried out; freely and without shame. Something he'd never done for Danarius, even in pain. He would never have given him the satisfaction no matter how much he made it hurt. But this memory held no pain, no terror… no Despair. The demon had nothing to cling to.

But Fenris did.

Hawke moved inside of him. In his body. In his heart. And now, in his soul. The harder the mage took him, the harder he held him; until they surged together as one. It was as though they both could breath under water. Drowning in the too tight embrace of the other. Each thrust punctuated by a needy breath. Hawke drove deep, spurred on by the sight and sound of the beautiful elf who moved in such erotic abandon beneath him.

The mage wrapped his hand around Fenris' cock and knew with distant triumph that the last of the other's control had been lost. Hawke heard the desperate scream as the body beneath him seized and then convulsed, spilling hot seed over his fingers even as the muscles around his own sex clenched unbearably. Then another scream, his own, and one final, desperate thrust, as the pressure in his gut burst. Release came for them both in a flood of enervating, incapacitating, pleasure. That was how Hawke had loved him that night, all amid murmured promises to return quickly and to take him to bed again before the marks on his neck had healed.

As Fenris gave full voice to his climax, gripping and almost tearing the bedclothes, he called out for his lover with every bit of strength he had left. Shouting out Hawke's name, giving sound and form to the very essence of his being with each syllable. There was no part of the other he could not remember with perfect accuracy and no hint of him he did not call out to. And with his peak, the memory shattered.

Somewhere in the chaos, a trembling far-away voice answered him. "Fen? Is that you?"

Splinters of his thoughts burst outwards in every direction as Fenris felt himself fall limp and exhausted to the floor. But he didn't stay there long. An infuriated sound roused him and he cracked his eyelids to peer over at what had made it. To his surprise, it was Danarius. Or…it was the thing that was clearly attempting to wear his face again.

The gnarled creature crouched in the corner of a charred and burnt out room. It glared at him, wheezing and spitting, it's face morphing and contorting into all manner of reminiscent shapes. Danarius. Varania. Hadriana. Everything and everyone that had tormented him in his life before Kirkwall. But its form had clearly become unstable and the creature, the demon, could no longer hold a single shape. Despair didn't know what it was anymore.

With deliberate intent, Fenris rose to his feet and drew his sword. He was himself again. Whole and armored; the lyrium tattoos blazing to life in his anger. The demon stumbled and cowered in the malevolent light, skittered backwards as the furious warrior closed in on it.

"I have said this once before." Fenris growled. "I mean it now just as much as I meant it then. You. Are. No. Longer. My. Master."

The blow landed devastatingly hard, tearing a scream from that stereophonic voice. Razors of lyrium shredded the creature, piercing through its façade with refracted power. Rags of shadow began to fall away from the prone body and just as they did, layers of the voice also drained out of it as dribbles of ichor. Fenris struck again, parried its claws, and sliced another clean line down the midsection. He didn't wait for another shriek; rolled his shoulders, raised the blade parallel to his sternum, turned, and lopped off the monster's head.

It fell. Rolled away into the darkness. In seconds, Despair was nothing but ashes.

Fenris took a slow breath and furrowed his brow. Everything around him had gone eerily quiet. He was standing alone in the ruin of a burned down house. The remaining support struts that still stood looked like ribs jutting up into a fiery sky with the rest of the skeleton scattered through piles of dust and refuse. A fallen chimney for a spine; floorboards for decomposing fingers. Desolate windows for teeth and nails. For a brief moment, Fenris started to think that this might be some kind of metaphorical embodiment of what was left of his life. Sometimes it seemed that all he had in his wake was soot and cinders. But then he realized that the structure, or what remained of it, still looked familiar.

His old mansion. Destroyed.

He still suspected Aveline.

But this meant that he was, in a weird way, back at the beginning. This is where he and Mariner had started. Which reminded him…

"Mariner?"

No answer.

"Mariner!" He yelled. Still nothing. In fact, he didn't see any evidence that anyone had passed by here, much less the other elf. Then again, the Elusivir didn't exactly leave obvious tracks. It was one of their most distinctive features. Besides, this was the Fade. The troublesome _ashvani_ could be, literally, anywhere.

He stepped forward, wary, and began to pick his way through the debris. There must be something here, he reasoned, for his mind to bring him to such a place. Was this where Hawke had gone? Still looking for him? Or had he been chased here by the demons that also haunted him as well. Had Hawke, in the end, despaired?

Fenris felt fatigued but elated. This was hell, but he somehow felt closer to his goal. He was meant to feel alone, but he didn't. Someone was reaching out for him; could hear him in the depths of torment. He would not abandon him.

"I'm coming." He said to the world. "Hold on, Hawke. I'm coming."


	6. Chapter 6

**Sgraffito**

Nothing was what it seemed, and Solas had already lost hours in his pursuit of answers. This was most certainly the remains of an ancient Elvhen temple to The Lovers but it was still entirely inexplicable how it had gotten here. This was no Fade apparition; this was real.

As real as the butterflies. As real as the White Hart.

All of which had existed only as long-ago memories but now, here they were. Solid and palpable as the stones and trees and soil.

Had he missed some manner of apocalyptic event that had somehow inverted their worlds? Had he himself crossed the Veil and not noticed?

'Of course not.' He chided himself. There was only one real explanation for all of this.

Aras Telvani was close by.

And if Aras Tevani was near and within the grounds of a temple to the Elvhenildë, that meant that there was likely a split or a fold in the Veil in the immediate vicinity as well. All he had to do was find it and he would find _him_.

Solas returned to the inscriptions beneath the figures of wolf and stag.

_Even on the burning ground,_

_Life awaits the Sun._

_E'er no matter seasons round,_

_Death was all but Done._

It was an Elvhen cipher; meant to, in part, highlight the theological opposition between the Dread Wolf and the White Hart but more so, it was constructed in such a way that the position of the wording was a hint as to the nature of the temple's layout. Specifically, where in the temple the central Well-of-Souls would have been located. In ancient temples of the Elvhenildë, the primary focus of worship was almost always built around a weak point in the Veil; so as better to facilitate the dreams and visions augurs undertook to supplicate and beg guidance of the White Hart. These weak points weren't always necessarily in the architectural middle of the structure, but usually had some relationship to the sacred geometry of the area. In this case, Solas immediately knew that the second part of the cipher, Sun and Done, was a metonym for dusk. Life and Death, then, formed the first part of the coded message. The preceding lines were his clue to their meaning.

Burning ground, for the Elves anyway, was a term meant to denote a cemetery or cremation ghat. In other words, a place of Death. Seasons round, conversely, usually referred to growing fields or orchards. Places of life. Taken together, he surmised that the puzzle was describing an overgrown crypt, or orchard sepulcher, at sunset.

He began to tear through the undergrowth; checking every rise, boulder, and outcropping for signs of interment. The sun was already low and he was running out of time. If the Hart was here, he likely wouldn't remain so for overly long. He never did.

But, at last, he found what he was looking for in the form of a tall, marble, platform topped with a lichen-splattered sarcophagus some six feet in length and nearly as wide. Tombs such as these were generally reserved for temple founders or beatified high priests but Solas had little concern that this one would still be holding a body after such a vast stretch of time. Rather, it was more of a marker now. A waypoint between the main entrance to the narthex and the central chamber which must have once served as the sanctuary. And just as he had hoped, the lid was scored with three parallel lines indicating the intended perspective.

It took only a few seconds of maneuvering to get the right angle and then only about thirty more minutes of patience before the sun was low enough to settle onto the horizon. Rays of pale-yellow light split through the trees, flaring off of the polished stone tablet lid, and causing spots to momentarily dance across his vision. Or, no. Were those the butterflies again?

Solas steadied himself against his staff and peered into the setting light breaking across the distance. He glimpsed movement but then it stopped. He shifted and tried again, almost frustrated with the effort of balancing himself at just the right vantage point. But then, he saw him.

The ancient Elvhen almost disbelieved the vision outright but the catch in his throat and the stutter of his heart told him it had to be real.

Maera stood just at the boundary of the horizon, almost at the limits of the vanishing point. He was in profile; gazing off into the forest as though observing an event unfolding that no one else could see. Whatever he was watching glossed him with a pensive expression but it didn't matter what he was doing, he was alive and…broken…

Solas could see the whole of his form but equally perceive that he was run through with fissures and cracks. He was like fractured glass with splinters and shards arranged together into the shape of a person they had once fit. Light bent through his facets into a dazzling rainbow of color and thought, tinting his white hair and pale skin with every hue the sky could imagine. Several pieces were still missing though, and the wounds they left were filled with a kind of glittering brilliance. In his ruin, Aras Telvani was more beautiful than ever before.

Almost immediately, Solas feared the other would run; and what a devastating moment that would be if he did. Though the Dread Wolf might be the only being in all of Thedas who could hunt the White Hart, he was doomed to never truly capture him. If Maera did not wish to be caught, he would leave no footprints or trail in his wake and could just as easily vanish back into the Fade as remain outside of it. Solas could see it clearly now; the shards of his being crackled through the Veil, wrapping around him and through him from a thousand tiny cuts. So fragile and yet, so formidably dangerous. Thought and reality were virtually indistinguishable for him, just as it had once been for all elves.

He took a step forward but the nearly imperceptible sound was enough to alert the Hart. He turned, gazing passively out over the wooded hills, the points of his ears perking from beneath wild, white, locks. But he saw Solas, very obviously he did, and when their eyes met, the Dread Wolf was stunned into silence to see the genuine joy in the smile that crept across his mouth and the ready excitement in his posture. How long had it been since they'd seen one another in the waking world? How many millennia had passed since they had physically stood in the same place? Too many to count and too long to remember. But the second implication was also clear; Aras Telvani would still not come to him. Not yet.

Solas growled low in his throat. He had no choice now but to give chase.

* * *

Fenris spit another curse at the uneven ground that seemed intent on gashing and cutting his feet no matter where he tried to step. He levied a curse at the sky as well, for good measure. The thick, ashy, wind that kept the barren landscape just so never let up, though it had led him out of the remains of the remembered mansion and into something far less familiar. What sort of hell had Hawke managed to trap himself in? He had to hand it to the mage. He never did anything half measure. Even eternal damnation.

"Hawke!" He yelled, trying as much as he could to be heard over the constant howl of the gale. There was no response.

"HAWKE!" He tried again. He knew he had heard the mage before. Faint and distant, but it had definitely been his voice.

"Fen…." It was a sound the wind made and Fenris froze, cocking his head to try and get a better bead on the direction.

"Hawke!"

"Fen…. I'm so sorry…." It was Hawke but where were the words coming from? They sounded like they were being carried on the desolate gusts; dropped down from a great height and landing all around him with no sense of their origin.

"…I'm so sorry…" He was saying. "I wanted to help you. I wanted you to feel safe…to know that I loved you…."

Fenris reeled about, looking above and below for any clue as to where he should turn. "I do know!" He called back. "Hawke! I do know!"

"…I'm so sorry I failed…. that you had to leave me…."

'Leave you? I didn't leave you; I was right…' Fenris thought before he caught himself. What manner of lie was this? Or…

He felt his stomach drop.

Was this what Hawke had feared the most? Was this how he had become trapped in the Fade? A prisoner to a terror he also couldn't admit to.

Fenris felt almost ashamed. How many times had he awoken in the middle of the night to his lover's crushing grip on his arm or to his sudden shouts as a violent nightmare roused him from sleep? How many times had Hawke come wandering into the same room as he, only to take a moment to look at him, smile, and then walk out again? How many times had Hawke stopped whatever he was doing to ask Fenris if he was alright? If he needed or wanted anything? How had he not noticed what was happening beneath that jovial exterior? How had he not noticed that Hawke feared losing him and by his own fault most of all?

"Hawke!"

The voice on the wind floated through again. "I tried, Fen…I just couldn't…I don't know how…"

In a flash of insight, Fenris stopped; planted his feet and shouted into the expanse. "Hawke! I need you! I need you right now. Don't you dare leave me. I will never forgive you if you do!"

It was something he wasn't sure if he'd said before. I love you, yes. I want you, yes. But…I need you? It was true, of course, but had Hawke heard it? Really heard it?

"Fen?"

"Didn't you hear me?" He was keeping his tone intentionally hostile because, for some reason, it always seemed to endear the mage to him even more. As Hawke had once noted, bland hostility was apparently Fenris-speak for affection. "I said, I need you. And you left me! So now, I had to come all the way down here, to whatever pit you've stumbled into, and drag you back home! So I hope you're happy!"

"Fen…are you…there?"

"I'm here, Hawke. Liam." He squinted through a blast of scouring dust. "I'm here. Where are you?"

From beneath a pile of shale slabs and cracked flagstones, Fenris spied something working to get out. He sprinted to the mound, leaving smears of blood and sanguine footprints behind him as he did so. But what he came upon was more than just a washout of debris, it was some kind of cairn. 'A tomb,' Fenris thought. Beneath which, Hawke had been slowly piling massive rocks on top of his own chest; burying himself in his own grave.

Fenris slammed the tip of his sword into the dirt and quickly began to pull the larger stones away. The rocks were jagged though, and cut him even more; until rivulets of blood began to flow freely over his hand and down his forearms. But Fenris wouldn't have cared either way. As he dug and clawed, scooping out handfuls of pebbles and mud, he could see Hawke's form revealed. He nearly sobbed in relief and elation. He had not been ready to bury his lover and now, was literally digging him back up.

Hawke was pale and peaked. His eyes were open, however, and he was still breathing. Albeit slowly and painfully. He didn't seem to see Fenris though, and even as the elf continued to free him from his self-imposed catacomb, the mage would reach out absently to drag heavy stones back onto himself almost as soon as they were set aside. Fenris snarled and snatched a particularly nasty piece of sharp granite out of his grasp before grabbing onto Hawke's wrists and shaking him.

"Stop it!" He yelled. "Stop doing that and look at me!"

Dazed, the mage looked down at their hands, at the splatters of blood and dust turning into a macabre kind of tempura paint and paste, and then up at Fenris. He seemed confused, as though he didn't quite understand what he was seeing. With a shaking touch, Fenris reached up to run his fingers through the matted black hair.

"Liam, it's me. I've come to get you."

Slowly, the mage nodded, but the answer in response wasn't encouraging.

"Don't tell Fenris." He said, barely above a whisper. "Don't tell him that I did this. I should have let him go. He died because he stayed with me. They all die if they stay with me."

Fenris flinched but didn't let go.

"Liam." He said again gently. "I'm not dead. And neither are you."

"I…saw…" The mage stared past him and into the roiling sky. "Graves. Headstones. Everyone is dead. My family is all gone…whatever I do, I just make it worse."

Fenris folded his legs underneath himself and hauled Hawke, as much as he could with the mage's bulkier weight, into his lap. Lying there, half in and half out of his own grave, Fenris understood what he was doing. This place, this dark, desperate, despairing, place, had taken ahold of him just as much as it had attempted to take hold of Fenris with the visage of Danarius. Hawke was a prisoner to Fear.

"They trusted me and I failed them."

"Hawke, listen to me, I…" Fenris took a deep breath and tried to swallow. "You didn't fail me. In fact, that would be impossible at this point, I think. Even if everything goes to shit, even if the both of us die right here and right now, you still wouldn't have failed me. Don't you see? I'm already better for having met you. If I die now, I die as someone I don't completely hate and that's…saying something. Even the others; they wouldn't have traded the years with you for anything. Not Varric, not Aveline nor, for fuck's sake, Isabela. Well, maybe Anders would; greasy, hag-faced, clot-wad that he is."

When no reply was immediately forthcoming, Fenris chanced a look back down at the mage resting in his arms. To his surprise, Hawke was staring at him. Unblinking, which was creepy, but finally looking directly at him.

"Fen? Did…" He coughed through parched lips. "Did you just call Anders…a twat?"

Fenris couldn't help himself but laugh. He'd usually kept the more colorful words he used to describe the other mage out of Hawke's hearing range, though his distaste for the abomination had never exactly been a secret.

"I…. yes. I believe I did." He smiled.

"Well," Hawke shivered weakly. "I won't tell him if you won't."

"Hawke? Is this really you?" Fenris whispered, reflexively clutching the mage tightly. "Have you come back to me?"

Unsure fingers came up to trace the tear tracks on Fenris' cheek. "I think so. Are we dead?"

"No." Fenris chuckled through a hitched breath. "No, Liam, we're not dead but we are in danger. Do you remember where you are? Do you recognize this place."

"Remember? Yes. Wait. Yes. We came through into the Fade to…to…something?" The mage tried to sit up a little but was, ultimately, unsuccessful. Falling back into Fenris' embrace, he grimaced slightly. "Corypheus. We came to fight that bastard demon thing, Corypheus. But…something went wrong. I…"

"Hush." Fenris smoothed the hair from Hawke's face. "It doesn't matter what happened. I've got you now. I'm getting us out of here. Can you walk?"

He pondered the question for a moment. "I think so? Help me up."

With much scrabbling and stumbling, The Lovers managed to pull each other upright, with Hawke's arm thrown over Fenris's shoulders and the rest of him supported by what remained of his staff; which was now little more than a walking stick in his opposite hand. Once balanced, Fenris reached over and pulled his sword from the ground. It was pretty obvious that Hawke would be able to offer little in terms of resistance should the need arise to fight their way out, but he was at least mobile for the moment. Limping and faltering as he went, but moving.

That was when they both felt the ground shake.

Hawke cringed and dropped his head as Fenris nearly dropped his weapon in an effort to keep their precarious equilibrium.

"What was that?" He asked, gripping the pommel of the Blade of Mercy a little more strongly.

"Fen." Hawke replied. "I…wish you hadn't come."

"What?!" The elf snarled in response. "Haven't you been listening to a thing I said?"

"I have." The mage said. "But I'm not alone out here. And it's not going to let us leave. I fought it for as long as I could but I wasn't strong enough to destroy it. I'm not strong enough…. Fen…to save you."

Hawke raised his head and met Fenris' eyes. Those beautiful, wide, golden eyes that he could lose himself in for hours on end. But there was no flicker of angst or dismay this time. Just dark, flat, determination that begged the world to make the wrong move. Dared the Fade to test him again.

"Maybe not." Fenris stated. "But I am."

* * *

They ranged all over; Fen'Harel and Aras Telvani. From the treacherous crags of the valley cliffs to the briar thickets and the dead-fall old growth weaving massive trunks through the standing forest like a basket of plenty awaiting the descent of the gods. And each was a path the Hart might take; up along the footholds in the mountain shales, under the dense brush, and across branches and logs with the same sure-footed grace as he might have had dancing a bonfire ritual. But the Dread Wolf was no novice and several times he nearly caught his quarry on an unexpected turn or predicted leap. Each time he did, Solas could hear the wildly joyous laughter echo back to him just as it did every time they engaged in the Hunt. But night had long since fallen and the darkness had overtaken the land despite the best efforts of the stars. As a result, Solas could see virtually nothing. At least in the Fade, he'd had the ability to defy conventional physics and to exceed the limitations of a physical form. As it stood now, he was having to use his legs and back just as much as his wits and his cunning.

The White Hart led him further and further from the site of the temple and finally they broke out onto an open plain; a low plateau that stretched from the tip of the valley to the high-altitude pass four kilometers away. When Solas was forced to pause to catch his breath again, he stopped to take stock of his surroundings.

There wasn't much to see even if it had been daytime. Hedgerows of winter grasses blanketed the countryside, a few low scrub trees poked out of the furrows, and the sound of water running beneath the thatch tickled his senses. But Maera was nowhere to be found. He glanced quickly back and forth, attempting to take up his scent again but it was gone. Solas nearly shouted at the moon in anger.

Then, a line of lanterns appeared in the bramble, snaking along through the hollows in the brake. His scowl deepened. These were Veilfire lanterns, given away by their pale blue flames and lack of reflection. As they approached, the soft creak of wooden wagons and pallets could be heard, the strained chuff of horses, and the delicate footfalls of elves in thick, dervish-kaftan, coats. There was only one kind of people Solas knew of who could be described as such but as far as he knew, they would never dare to walk his lands openly. They would never tempt their fates at the hands of the Dread Wolf at night.

The Elusivir.

Nedan-Caravani ehn vira alas'en. (The Lost People Who Walk the World)

What were _they_ doing here?


	7. Chapter 7

**Anamorphosis**

Just as Fenris finally allowed Hawke to part from him, the mage slumped to the ground; sitting heavily on a high, flat, rock a few feet from the now empty cairn. He was exhausted; every movement was stiff and sent shooting pains through his joints. He didn't know how long he had been here but it felt like an eternity. Fenris' hand dropped to his shoulder, steadying him until he was suitably upright.

"What is it, Hawke? What's out there?"

It was such a simple question, really; and yet the answer was so achingly complicated.

"A demon." He answered. "But not like the things we've fought before. This one…I don't know. It gets into your head. Turns the world upside down. Makes everything seem real and imaginary all at the same time. And then you get punched in the face by a giant spider."

The ground shook again and Fenris turned around and about, trying to get a sense of where the creature was.

'I don't see anything."

"Yeah, it does that. It's going to come at us with something nightmarish first. Something it can draw from our fears. That's how it works out here."

Fenris nodded but didn't answer. There were any number of doubts and horrors he harbored that he definitely was in no mood to see physically personified. He was a little amused by the giant spider, though. Hawke had always had a particularly unique distaste for arachnids of any size.

Rocks tumbled down from an escarpment and Fenris readied his blade. But what came to them first was a voice.

"So good of you to come, Fenris." It rasped. "Too afraid to be separated from Hawke, so you come here to see to it that your separation will, at last, be permanent."

So, that's the game they were going to play.

"Look at him." The creature continued. "Tired. Weak. Spent. He has nothing left to give you. You've taken it all and now Hawke is going to die."

Fenris bristled. He knew that was the darkness was whispering to him was a lie, but it didn't mean that the words didn't sting. He knew he feared loss and he knew he feared the loneliness that followed almost as much as feared the possibility of being enslaved again. But he hadn't ever faced the nagging part of himself that also believed that he asked too much of Hawke, was too much of a burden on the mage, and that he took too much and gave too little. What had stayed him in that regard, however, was that he knew Hawke shared the same fear.

"Come out and fight, demon!" Fenris called out to the maelstrom. "You'll need to wield more than just poisoned words if you want to face me. Enough with your illusions."

More rocks shifted and collapsed. More of the ground shook. Whatever it was, it was moving towards them and it was big. Shadows flitted about and Fenris glanced back to check on his lover. Hawke had remained seated on the table stone, leaning wearily into his staff for support but his eyes were resolute. He intended to fight, even if it took the last of his strength. Fenris vowed to make sure that it didn't.

Finally, they saw it. A leviathan rather than a spider-thing, swimming through the air on arms and tentacles of ink-and-water smoke. It nearly blacked out the sky, floating across the barren expanse with one great eye turned to see them both. One-part Kraken and one-part devil crustacean, it came through the clouded murk with dripping mouth agape and rows upon rows of grasping teeth. Even worse, it's body seemed only partially tangible; mutating in and out of material existence like a squid pulsing with camouflaging colors. But instead of iridescent reds, blues, and greens; it was an oscillation of flesh, slime, and ether.

Fenris immediately dropped into a defensive stance and called upon the lyrium in his skin to wait at the ready. It wasn't that he had a tremendous amount of experience with this sort of thing, but he could already tell that his ability to phase in and out of physical matter was going to be an asset here. Hawke heaved a pained breath and carefully stood up, sliding the remains of his staff up into his hand. He was going to be seriously limited in what kinds of magic he could use but little was better than nothing. The nagging doubts still dogged him, though. He'd purposely left Fenris at home in Kirkwall because he'd had no doubt that his lover would die to protect him. And this very situation was exactly what he'd been trying to avoid. Now, what he feared most, that Corypheus' taunting words would turn out to be true, was enough to cause his heart to stutter. If Fenris died here, it would be the end of them both.

The leviathan bore down on them; whipping and lashing at them from above. None of the strikes were serious, however, and Fenris was easily able to dodge the higher blows while still protecting Hawke from the more grounded ones. The demon was testing them. It knew Hawke wasn't mobile and seemed to be gauging just how adept Fenris was going to be at shielding the both of them from harm while still trying to fight offensively. The elf's skills were certainly impressive, it noted, but it was a stretch even for someone so practiced.

A shadow flogged the ground; becoming tangible just long enough to batter the two combatants into a momentary retreat. Fenris countered; sliding the flat of his blade between the two halves of an immaterial tentacle with enough patience that the beast was forced to take the wound if it wanted to also take form and hit him in return. This was how they traded blows for several minutes. Each time the demon would charge them, either mage or warrior would thrust their weapon into the shapeless morass, keeping it steadied until the creature had no choice but to pull the blow or be cut in its own attack. Both Hawke and Fenris knew, however, that they wouldn't be able to keep up this strategy for long. The demon would simply outlast them if they did.

And that is precisely what it intended to do. Demons of Fear and Despair didn't generally make a habit of engaging in open warfare. Rather, it was their tactic to pick away at their prey piecemeal, until there was nothing left inside of them that was worth fighting for. It pressed down, like a heavy, constricting, weight all around, suffocating, and whispering spiteful words of worthlessness, meaninglessness, and pain. This monstrosity that floated in the air was the embodiment of all of those terrible things. It would strike at them; flay them and thrash at them but it would never really face either of them. It would besiege their minds, consume their thoughts, and feed on their love for one another until none existed. It wasn't in a hurry, either. It would happily keep this up for years if they lasted that long; growing ever stronger as it devoured them. In the end, it meant that there would be no heroic battles here or glorious triumphant returns with swords and banners held aloft. That simply wasn't how such beings were ever defeated. But fear, despair, and hate was something both elf and human knew better than anyone.

Fenris stepped back and bolstered Hawke with his shoulder.

"We can't keep this up forever." He said in response to Hawke's wearied nod. "We need to reach its center mass and discorporate it."

"Any brilliant ideas on how to do that?" The mage asked.

"Yes." Fenris growled. "But you're not going to like it."

Hawke glanced up at him with a sour look and then down at the glowing, white, lines latticed across his skin. "Fenris. You're not thinking that…"

"It's the only chance we have."

"Fen." Hawke tried again. "That's suicide. I won't let you do that. You phase out and into that creature and you won't come back out of it. You'll just fall deeper into the Fade. The lyrium could dissolve you both into spirit and then you'd be trapped here forever."

"No, I don't think I will be."

Hawke glared at his lover incredulously. Fenris seemed oddly calm, with a small, knowing, smile curving the edge of his mouth. "I've been thinking about everything Mariner said on our way here."

"Wait…Mariner's here?!"

"That in a minute." Fenris raised a thoughtful finger, watching the leviathan carefully as it began to move back into striking position. "But yes. Anyway, he was rather cryptic about it all with this and that about spirits and memories but he seemed very intent that I keep something on me. Kept telling me that I would need it. I think I understand what it's for now."

Hawke looked worriedly over at the demon. "And what might that be?"

From beneath the wrapped, red, scarf around the wrist of his gauntlet, Hawke observed as Fenris produced the Winternight crystal; the ornament Mariner had sent them several months back. Without hesitation, Fenris pressed the tiny shard into Hawke's hand.

"This is how I found you, Hawke. Through the memory that's kept in here. This is how you're going to find me in return when the Fade takes me."

Hawke blanched, growing frantic. "Fen, this doesn't make any sense."

"I know." He replied gently; laying his palm against the mage's cheek. "But this is the only way. Demons are creatures of magic and will. I can fight it but I cannot defeat it. You can defeat it, but you cannot fight it. I'll have to take it all at once. Hold this tightly, keep your wits about you, and come and find me."

Fenris turned and leapt up onto a spire of rock, the sickly greenish sky against his back and the tempest of hate bearing down on him. He sheathed his sword and with a snarl, lit the lyrium all down his back and shoulders, onto his limbs, and finally across his face and throat. He held both gauntleted hands out at his sides, clicking the talons together as pale blue magic wafted up into the air. His form soon became indistinct; wavering and haunting, almost like a ghost. The shimmering lines of white bled into one another until the elf had nearly ceased to be and Hawke could only see a specter of him. A blue wraith where Fenris had once stood.

The demon leviathan screamed into the void and lashed out at him; drawn by the sudden influx of energy and the challenge shouted at the world.

"FENRIS!"

For a second, Hawke saw his lover turn back.

"I love you, Liam."

Chaos descended. A white, hot, explosion of light and power that burned like an inferno at the center of a star. Hawke was blinded almost immediately. Rocks and debris rained down onto his face. Everything was burning, it seemed like the entire expanse of the sky over head was wailing in anguish. Black tar splattered everywhere; bubbling, hissing, and boiling onto the stone. He struggled to get his bearings, to be able to see anything or hear anything beyond the din of shrieking voices and enraged howling. He stumbled and then, he was falling.

Falling. Into the silent, endless, abyss.

Quiet, like sleep. Cold, like death. But filled with overwhelming sadness.

And then bright! A sliver of light splitting the grief.

He was sitting…on his bed. At home. In Kirkwall.

"What the….!?"

Hawke leapt to his feet, nearly tumbling over as he caught his toe on the rug. He wheeled around.

"Fenris!?" He called. Hawke had no illusions that this was still the Fade but he wasn't about to lose his lover to something as banal as a change of scenery. And while he didn't lament being momentarily out of reach of the demon, it would be too easy to get lost in the labyrinth of dreaming. Again. He knew all too well the danger they were still in, seeing as they'd done it before. "Fenris!"

A sharp jab to his hand caught his attention, and Hawke raised his palm up to examine the crystal ornament. 'What a weird thing for Fenris to fixate on,' he thought. And what was this about Mariner being here as well? What was a holiday decoration going to do for their current predicament? This was about a fight! Right?

Voices from downstairs roused him from his thoughts but as he stepped out into the hallway, a curious fog began to fill the rooms. Grey and heavy, almost like smoke, but it smelled of sea water and salt. The sense of foreboding was palpable and Hawke figured it best if he didn't tarry overlong. The Fade was already attempting to entrap him again. He looked around the bedroom and himself. He was apparently dressed in just his red tunic; no armor, no staff, nothing else to recommend him. Nor could he see anything immediately useful around him. 'Fine. Have it your way, Fade.' He thought. 'We do this the hard way then.'

Hawke noticed only in passing, but he was aware that he now had a rather surprising sort of clarity. The vagaries of the Fade felt like they were retreating and he didn't have to fight the influence of the memories and emotions that came unbidden into his mind. Only a short time ago he had been a complete prisoner of the dream; unaware of his own sense of self and completely unable to discern fantasy from reality. He'd been intent on burying himself in his own grave…or had it been in despair? He growled. He was really starting to hate this place.

The mage set out from the comforts of his bedroom and into the mire outside his door. Still heavier banks of fog rolled in and he could feel the cold, damp, mist settling into his clothes and skin with the kind of chill he generally associated with the coast. He stopped. Is that where this was? Was he on the coast somewhere? He felt the crystal shiver in his hand.

"I'm…I'm sorry…" He heard Fenris' voice up ahead. He sounded so bleak. So heart-broken.

Hawke trudged forward, almost batting at the greyness in an attempt to clear enough of a path that he could see where the sound was coming from. The roar of his bedroom fireplace had already given way to the roar of the ocean far in the distance. And then, an unpleasant squelch beneath the heel of his boot forced him to pause. He looked down but it was just more grey.

With a few tentative steps, Hawke tested the ground ahead of him. More slick squelching and something crunchy. He felt, with his toe, along a hard beam or rod a few inches away, and then something like curved, parallel, bars. The mage recoiled. Ribs. He was walking on corpses. But he couldn't see them, only feel them.

"I didn't want to…" Fenris' voice again.

Then Hawke remembered. This must be Fenris' last memory of Seheron, when the Fog Warriors fell at Danarius' command and his hand. They'd just been battling a demon of Fear and Despair; it almost made perfect sense that, in its death throes, it would have drug him here. But the worst part, as Hawke well knew, was that he had no idea how long Fenris thought he had been here. For the mage, they'd been parted for mere minutes but the Fade played with time in frustrating ways. From Fenris' perspective, he might have been here for days, even weeks. He was grateful for the crystal, though. If this little trinket was, in fact, keeping him connected to his lover and leading him ever closer through the confusion, he had much to be thankful for.

"Fen?" He tried. "Fenris, where are you?"

"I just couldn't stop it…"

"Fenris, I know you're out there! Talk to me!"

"You did so much for me…. showed me such a beautiful life that might have been…"

"FENRIS!"

"And I took it away from you…"

"Come now, little one. No sense crying over the inevitable."

Hawke froze in his tracks. He knew that voice. That smarmy, wet, gravelly voice that felt like the vocal equivalent of cold sand and mushy paper. It was Danarius' voice, of that he was sure. He recalled their conversation about this incident from years ago. How Danarius had found him on the island, had ordered him to kill the Fog Warriors who had taken him in, how the dream of freedom had vanished before his eyes and all that had replaced it was cynicism and blood.

He continued forward but slowly and with as much care as he could manage. Instead of a hazy, smoldering, octopus-demon filling the air, he had to contend with a choking fog and instead of knifelike stones cutting his hands and feet as he struggled to walk, he had to deal with the cracked bones and shattered horns of Qunari rebels that had been dead for years. But he was definitely getting closer; two figures were just now beginning to take shape up ahead. One, a tall, billowing silhouette in robes and the second, kneeling on the ground staring at his hands.

"You know," Danarius was saying. "I would have thought you'd have seen the pattern by now, Fenris. Even Hawke didn't hesitate to give you up. Turned you over to me, your rightful master, without so much as a blink. But of course he did, since you're not really of much use when you're like this. And Varania too. She certainly didn't see any reason not to betray you. It was all very predictable."

"Yes." Fenris answered, his voice subdued and morose.

"Good thing I finally found you then. Come now, it's time to get back to the city. Don't worry about this whole debacle. Your memories won't linger." Danarius' voice dropped into an ominous timbre. "I'll see to it that we take care of that…"

Hawke slipped the crystal into the front pocket of his shirt to ensure that he would have both hands free. There was something he had wanted to do since the very beginning and this being the Fade, it was as good a time as any to do it.

Without preamble he bull-rushed the figure of the Tevinter magister; taking off at a dead run and then utterly, unceremoniously, slamming into the old man with the full weight of his momentum. In any other circumstance, it might almost have been comical. But as it was, both mages went down in a heap, crashing into a pile of bones and gore with an unsettling racket. Hawke ended up on top, as he had planned, pinning Danarius to the ground by straddling his midsection. He punched that sneering face once and then twice more until he got the satisfying crack of teeth. In the real world, he'd been intent on Fenris getting his own revenge for suffering under Danarius' horrors but here, he could finally take out his own anger on the monster.

With a yell, both mage and magister began to struggle but Hawke wasn't about to let this go down without as much blood and injury as he could inflict. Danarius continued to bite and claw at him but the memory, the form, wasn't strong. With a satisfied grin, Hawke wrapped both hands around the magister's throat and began to squeeze as hard as he could. He would strangle the life out of this flashback with his bare hands if it took every ounce of force he had left.

"Fenris!" Danarius shrieked. "Save me, boy! What are you waiting for!"

It was at that moment that Hawke had a terrible thought. Trapped in the hallucination, manacled by the feelings and recollections of one of the most shameful moments in his life, would Fenris recognize him? Was he about to be punched in the chest by a lyrium-phased fist? The mage could have kicked himself for not realizing the obvious. This was a memory of betrayal and now he was a sitting target for the worst kind of betrayal there could possibly be.

Danarius thrashed beneath him. "Now, you little worm! I said kill him!"

Hawke turned to where Fenris had been sitting but was shocked cold at not seeing him there. There was _someone_ sitting there for certain, but it was not his lover.

An elf, but not Fenris.

Leto.


	8. Chapter 8

**Sotto in su**

It was clear that the Elusivir were wary of him but Solas was rather accustomed to that. In fact, he had a rather long and glorious history of getting himself into all kinds of trouble among the wandering clans, both Dalish and Elusivir, of the modern age; whether by dint of his own actions or purely by circumstance. So, when the vanguard of the caravan stopped a few yards short of him, he responded to their hailed customary greeting congenially, with the same heavily dialectical Elvhen characteristic of the northern nomads of the Kirinae.

"Son vhellem, alinas." (Well met, stranger.)

"Son vhellem sulevinast. Ma anenaan ir moranes or arla, falon'en" (Well met indeed. You are very far from home, friends.) Solas replied.

He wasn't entirely sure he had the inflection or declension right but, then again, it had been centuries since he'd spoken the cant of the Elusivir. It was quite close in cadence and vocabulary to that which was spoken in the outer districts of Arlathan but the Caravani had been separated from their ancestral homelands for so long, their pronunciation and verb endings had shifted considerably. The language was, none the less, a welcome sound to hear.

Seeing the Elusivir caravans was also almost as spectacular as hearing their Elvhen. A line of vardo-style wagon-homes, drawn by short, stocky, black and white horses, hugged close to the edge of the road. Each was unique; highly decorated, brightly painted, and intricately carved with gilded icons of deer, hounds, dragons, and griffons. Even in the dead of night, he could see that they portrayed stories of the Elvhen gods or depicted important life events. In that way, just as the caravan might thread its way through the fabric of the landscape, so too did their artistic depictions weave in and out of their living quarters, their language, and their coats. As a fellow artist, he always appreciated the incredible work, talent, and time that went into these things.

Ah, but the coats. He remembered these well. Just as each elf maintained a particular vardo, each individual also wore a singularly spectacular long-coat. Usually dyed with earthen colors, they could be brown, blue, green, and occasionally black; depending on the predilections of the wearer and each was exquisitely embroidered with fantastical scenes. Solas honestly sometimes wondered how they had time for anything else; so elaborate and intricate were the designs that seemed to cover every aspect of their lives. And this was the case of every member of the caravan, even the children. And there were children! Half a dozen at least; from an infant to several others roughly nine to twelve years in age. How long had it been since he'd seen an elven community made luminous with many healthy, rambunctious, children?

To his delight, he also noted the presence of at least two _ashvani_: a young one not more than a few years past late adolescence and an older one who seemed intent to glare at him from beneath a suspicious brow. He almost never saw _ashvani_ anymore. They were rare among the Dalish and virtually non-existent among the City Elves, and those who had not fallen prey to the Serenic trade were generally pretty careful about never revealing their true natures. Only among the Elusivir did they live openly now. A last, dying, remnant of one of the most distinctive parts of Ancient Elvhen culture; the Oracles, the scions of the White Hart who once read the signs and symbols of the Fade as easily as one might read a children's book. He sighed. Soon, it seemed, they would be gone as well.

The head of the caravan, who was typically called the Harbinger he recalled (analogous to Dalish Keepers), approached him. This Harbinger was an older elf, from what Solas could see. What had once been thick locks of long black hair had greyed at his temples and his dark blue coat showed considerable wear and re-stitching. He was, however, regal in bearing and confident in his demeanor. He did not seem at all afraid of the strange, tattered, elf encountered on the valley road in the middle of the night.

"I am Avenant."

"My name is Solas."

As the Harbinger waved his gesture to instruct the rest of the caravan to stop for the night, Solas remained politely on the margins.

"Indeed. But the hour is late and the woods unsafe. What brings you out here, Solas?" Avenant asked.

He considered his response carefully before replying. "I was looking for something."

"And? Did you find it?"

"As much as I think I am going to for the moment."

Avenant smiled, tilting his head in thoughtful regard. "Come then." He announced, both to Solas and to the caravan. "Join us for dinner. It isn't much but the fire will be warm and the meal filling."

Solas nodded and acquiesced to the offered hospitality. "Thank you. But may I ask, what brings your caravan this far south? I have never known the Elusivir to come this way."

"Not that you've seen us, anyway." Avenant chuckled. "But we have been here before, I assure you. Many times."

Solas frowned at that. It wasn't that escaping his attention wasn't possible but for an entire Elusivir caravan to have gone under his notice, and more than once, within walking distance of Skyhold made him momentarily question his faculties. "That doesn't answer my question."

He didn't mean it to come out so blunt.

Avenant turned and narrowed his eyes slightly at the tone. "No, I suppose it doesn't. Let us sit, ni'enas." (Elvhen, a term meaning "acquaintance.")

Within seemingly minutes, the horses had been unhitched and were resting, the wagons staked to boulders and bluffs for stability, and the mealtime fires lit with cook pots bubbling with traveler stew. To Solas' surprise, he noted that virtually all other fires, aside from the main one, in the encampment consisted of blue Veilfire torches and lanterns. Oh, but of course they were. Veilfire left no smoking traces and could be hooded in an instant.

With as much mannerliness as he could demonstrate, Solas then followed the Harbinger into the midst of the caravan and took the offered place on a heavy cushion that had been set out for him on the far side of the bonfire. As he did so, he observed as several of the other Elusivir immediately followed them, surreptitiously gathering around to see this stranger and get a better look at the obviously lone, and unusual, elven apostate in their midst. The Elusivir were often known to be hospitable but they rarely were so open with their invitations.

Said elven apostate, however, was only partially amenable to being watched. If a young elf came too close, he might glare at them for an instant but he appeared otherwise harmless. Avenant still made it a point, though, to take up a position facing their visitor and to direct the others safely around him.

"To answer your question then," Avenant finally broke the silence as ladled stew was being passed around the circle. "Our Oracles brought us. We are also here to reclaim something we lost."

Flickering red and orange highlights framed the face of a pensive mage, his hood lowered to his shoulders and his green and grey wool tunic rumpled at his waist. He leaned on his staff and seemed all together a potentially menacing figure if obscured beneath the veneer of a weary traveler. It made for an unsettling dichotomy but Avenant did not betray his concerns with ill-conceived expressions or loose words.

Out of nowhere, a wooden bowl filled with steaming meat and vegetables appeared beneath Solas' nose. He startled and looked up, to the soft laughter of the cooks and several attending children waiting for their own cups to be filled. Standing not more than a few feet before him was the young _ashvani_ he'd taken notice of earlier. He couldn't have been any older than his early twenties but he looked as though he might be related to Avenant. They shared the same rich black hair with waves and curls to the waist. They also both had the same green eyes and a barely restrained ebullience usually reserved for the tragically innocent. But the last part was certainly not the case, as far as Solas observed. This young _ashvani_ already had a deep and vicious scar across the right side of his neck, visible above the rise of his collar to the base of his ear. The cut that made it would have been terrible, a truly grievous wound, to have left such a mark and it was surprising that he could have survived it at all.

"Take it." He said, waving the bowl slightly to get the apostate's attention.

Having been caught staring, Solas immediately lowered his gaze and accepted the meal. "Thank you. I'm sorry, I did not mean to unnerve you."

"You didn't." The _ashvani_ cocked his head, turned, and walked away.

Avenant couldn't help but chuckle. "My child." He offered. "Aurvandil."

Solas nodded. "I thought he might be. You must feel truly blessed to have him. The _ashvani_ are so seldom seen these days."

"We are blessed with each elf who comes to us. Ar'an anir serannas sul ga sal'shiral" (We are grateful for all life.)

Solas felt that this was meant to tell him something esoteric but he wasn't entirely sure what. He also felt watched; an outsider encroaching on a hearth that was not his own. He ate the stew without reservation and was pleased to find it to be quite savory. Simple, but satisfying. And yet, something else was off. If he'd had the mind to consider it, he might almost have guessed that the Elusivir of this caravan knew more about him than they reasonably should have. That they, somehow, knew that they shared their fire with none other than the Dread Wolf himself. But that was absurd. No one could know that but Solas himself.

And one other…

With trepidation, Solas gently laid the empty bowl onto a stone next to him and drew his eyes back up to the Harbinger, who had remained still and attentive the entire time. Observing him cautiously but never betraying anything more than a friendly and welcoming attitude.

"Tell me something." Avenant spoke up cordially. "Have you seen the butterflies yet this season?"

* * *

Leto.

That was the only possible name this elf could have.

Because it wasn't Fenris.

And yet, the thing was, Hawke had actually always imagined Leto with red hair. Or, at least, when he had tried to picture what Fenris might have looked like before they'd met, he'd always envisioned a younger, slightly smaller, elf with coppery hair and golden skin. But this elf was pale and drawn, with jet black hair just above his shoulders, and a wiry, but not dissimilar, build. Despite the degree to which the Fenris he knew viewed himself as a broken, corrupted, version of what he should have been, this was like finding the eruciform, the larval stage, of the imago that was Fenris. A phylogenetic recapitulation of his life in successive stages of metamorphosis.

In other words, Hawke could see how the Fenris he loved had emerged from this creature but this creature was not Fenris. This was a memory; an enraged, traumatic, memory sent here to protect Fenris from…from what exactly?

"Hello, Leto." Hawke said.

He looked up at him from where he knelt on the ground, eyes still occasionally darting to the side as Danarius' voice and form faded into the background. Melting into the chaos of Fenris' subconscious to reform and recoup. More was the pity; Hawke had really been looking forward to tearing that thing apart.

"What have you done?" The elf asked, his voice tinged with an angry snarl. "What have you done to my master?"

"You don't have a master." The mage replied immediately.

Leto glared at him but the expression that lay behind it was confusion.

"I don't understand." He slowly rose to his feet. "Who are you?"

Leto looked so different from Fenris in such unexpected ways that Hawke couldn't help but appraise the figure before him. He was clean of the lyrium, of course, but Hawke had expected that. His hair was styled similarly, however, and the mage smiled to himself at the realization that Fenris hadn't even so much as changed the direction he parted his hair in the better part of a decade. Other than that, his black hair was wind-spun, his tunic rough, and his complexion ashen.

"Who do I look like?"

Leto scowled and Hawke almost laughed. The face he made was so distinctive; wrinkling the edges of his nose and pinching the center of his brow, and so very much like whenever his lover was annoyed with his questions that Hawke couldn't help but see Fenris once again reflected back to him. The response the mage got, however, was concerning.

"Danarius."

"What?! What are you talking about? I don't look anything like that withered old goat!"

Leto narrowed his eyes and continued to examine the man before him. But then, memories soon began to layer upon memories and the Fade shuddered in response.

"You're a mage?"

"Yes."

"You rule your household?"

"Uh, I guess? I mean, it's just you and me, Fen…Leto. Oh, well, and Orana too, I suppose. And Sandal and Bodahn. Gamlen, maybe. Well, then sometimes Carver…you know what? Sure. I suppose I rule a household."

There was another pause.

"And you keep me there?"

"I don't keep you there. We live there. Together."

Leto nodded but not in an affirmatory way. "And I…" He seemed to contemplate a thought at length, staring at Hawke with the barest glimmer of recognition. "Lie beneath you?"

Hawke honestly wasn't sure how to take that. It was such a bizarre and unanticipated question. And more than a little salacious.

"You…" Hawke stopped himself. He was about to simply agree but the frightened look on the young elf's face told him that something else was going on in this interaction. He was talking to Leto, but Fenris was not absent from this ethereal place. He had to be here somewhere, even if unconsciously. These were his memories after all.

"You…come to me of your own volition. When you want to. When you want me."

That seemed to trigger something in the elf, who flinched at the first mention of want. "You're lying. I don't have such feelings."

Hawke crossed his arms but chuckled lightly. "Oh, yes you do. You just didn't know what they were at first. But then, when you were free, you took the time to learn them, to learn these things about yourself. On your own. I…I'm sorry I was angry with you about that, Fen. It took _me_ awhile to understand what you needed. That there were all these scattered pieces of yourself you had to pick up before you could come back."

"Back?" Leto's voice began to waver. He took a step away from the mage.

"Yes, back. You came back to me. Do you remember? We were talking about your life after Danarius died. We talked about the future. We were in that disgusting old mansion you insisted on living in. You asked me if I knew where our life would lead. I told you that I wanted to stay with you and you smiled, Fen." Hawke dropped his hands, opening his arms in calm supplication. Inviting the other closer, or at least, trying not to further agitate him.

"You smiled at me." He was almost breathless. "And you came back into my arms and you stayed with me. We made love that night and you were the most beautiful thing in my life."

"I would…I would not!" The elf hissed.

"Yes, you would." The mage insisted. "You did. Because I am _not _Danarius."

"You're…You're not…my master?"

"No, I'm not."

There was a long moment of silence between them. A silence punctuated by uneasy scowls and the pensive elf shifting nervously from one foot to the other. And then a desperate whisper that nearly cracked Hawke's heart in half.

"But how could you not be? You own me."

Hawke thought he was prepared for anything. He honestly did. He thought that he had anticipated just about anything that Fenris, or Leto, might potentially say to him. But this cut him to the quick.

"You own me."

* * *

Hours before dawn, the caravan had quieted into sleep and Solas found himself walking the outskirts of the wagons thinking back on some of what Avenant had said to him.

"It's easy to get lost." The Harbinger was saying, poking gingerly at the fire with a long, metal, stake. "When you don't know the way."

"And you do?" Solas didn't mean for his tone to sound so arrogant but it was a habit that was hard to break. Avenant, however, didn't seemed fazed by it.

"No." He replied. "We walk in the footsteps of the one who does. He calls us to the road once more."

This caused the elder elf to sit up and take closer notice. He decided to try and see just how much this Elusivir really knew. "Where do the butterflies lead?"

"Arla." Avenant had said plainly. "Home."

Now, as Solas picked his way through crunchy patches of snow and ice, mats of old autumn leaves, and soggy ground, he couldn't help but repeat the word over and over again. The Elvhen had no home, of that he was certain. And the Elusivir least of all; who had been distinctly nomadic for longer than even their own histories could account for. What home could Avenant have been referring to? Solas had asked, but the other had not responded. He had only drawn a sign in the ashes with his stake; a symbol like a tree. Or maybe it was antlers. It was a symbol whose meaning could be taken multiple ways.

He sighed. Watching his breath dissipate in the late winter air, Solas couldn't help but feel like a broken matchstick hovering over cold cords of dried pine. He could do nothing to inspire them, not as of yet anyway, but already they sought a new hearth and a new fire to gather around.

Maren órë. Maera.

The name resounded in his soul like a mantra, a spell of invocation, and a plea all at once. It was the sound of his own heartbeat and the thrum of life as it pressed up from the ground beneath him and into the first warming days of spring. It was both a benediction and a curse. He repeated it through a pained sigh; rolling the sound in his mouth before allowing it to take flight into the world once again.

The sound of soft footsteps roused him from his reverie. He thought, for a moment, that one of the young Caravani might be lurking in the shadows, spying on him, but these steps were far too deliberate; coming towards him without hesitation. No, this was no prowling sneak; he was meant to hear this.

Unfortunately, however, he disliked indelicate approaches.

Solas whirled around on his heel to face whomever it might be and, in a moment, had to swallow his own breath or have it leave him in a cry.

Beside the blue cast of a Veilfire torch, ghostly and near spectral, stood an unmistakable form. Long, white, hair – as bright as high mountain snowcaps – fell all around him, with braided auburn streaks still lightening with each passing day. His face serene and contemplative, eyes blue and glittering, and pale skin seemingly untouched by wind or sun. He did not look real and yet he was. He had to be.

All motion in the universe stopped.

The figure breathed; a gentle rise and fall to his shoulders. He even smiled a little at seeing Solas at last. Solas, who barely dared to speak lest he break this most welcome hallucination, struggled for words. He considered dashing forward but too deeply feared that the Hart would run from him again, leaving him to nothingness. He then thought that he should call out to his mate, but there was trepidation even in that. And so, he did the one thing that he had never done before. He begged; body and soul.

Without a word, Solas sunk to his knees in a loose mound of snow pack. He dropped his staff to his side and raised both hands as if in divine supplication. He had nothing else with him and nothing else to offer but the worn, disconsolate, somber man he'd become in the years since the end of the Evanuris. This was no god surveying the adoration of his mendicants, this was a vagabond wrapped in rags who had once subjugated a pantheon at the cost of everything he had. It was with growing terror that Solas realized he could not make the other come to him as he once had, no matter what he did. His heart began to weep at the reality of his unworthiness of grace.

But for his wonder, the silvery light of the torch washed over a very real figure as it came towards him. The White Hart crossed the short distance without sound or disturbance until he was looking down onto Solas face, without rancor but with a blithely affectionate smile. The ethereal _ashvani_ was so close; he could almost touch him. But such a thing was as blasphemy, even to the Dread Wolf himself.

How long had they been apart? A millennium? An Age? More? Were they not still separated by a chasm wider than time or space or thought?

But then, the most tentative touch grazed his cheek. Fingertips tickling along his jaw, to his ear. Skin against his skin; warmth on the cold, wind-bitten, part of his neck where his collar exposed his shoulder.

"Suilana, Solas. Ar ema eanas melenal sul ma." (Hello, Solas. I have been waiting for you.)


	9. Chapter 9

**Metamorphosis**

"I don't own you, Fenris. No one owns you."

"Why do you keep calling me Fenris? My _name_ is Leto."

"Your name _was_ Leto. You didn't want it back."

The dark-haired elf glared at the mage with unrestrained hostility. "And I suppose that next you will tell me that I'm not your captive. That I am bound by choice?!"

"If you want to leave, Fenris." Hawke wavered slightly in his words. "If you want to…leave me. I won't stop you. But…"

Leto tensed but didn't interrupt.

"…Know that the reason you are here right now, is because you were looking for me. You came to this place, to the worst, most frightening, parts of yourself because you would not be parted from me. Somewhere, deep down in there, you know that. I'm sorry, Fen. I…I don't have a lot left in me to give right now. But whatever I do have, it's yours. Do with it what you will."

With that, Hawke located the nearest protruding, rock-like, structure and sat down. He was tired, injured, and quickly running out of fight but if he could muster what remained of it in these last moments, he would. To the mage's sudden surprise, the fog of confusion and chaos that surrounded them began to lift. Instead of blue-grey nothingness, he could begin to make out the familiar shapes of their living room in the house in Kirkwall. Instead of a formless rock, he was sitting on the edge of the divan near the hearth; which had now suddenly roared to life with a pleasant fire. Then, a massive pine tree simply grew straight up out of the rug, its roots spreading out across the floor to become the wood paneling on veins of granite. But instead of producing pine cones, the ends of its branches grew candles and ornaments, and garlands out of pine needles that turned from green to red to silver.

The furniture appeared similarly; rising up out of the floor as roots and plants before blossoming into woven designs on cotton and wool fabrics. The window which then formed on the adjacent wall was oddly piecemeal, and looked to have been glued together out of shattered glass fragments, some of which may have come from a Winternight bauble and others from windows elsewhere in the house. There was nothing to be seen beyond it however. No day and no night.

Hawke chanced a smile. "That's right, Fen. This is our home. Yours and mine. Do you remember this particular night?"

Leto continued to glare at him but the expression held much less venom than it had moments before.

"I…" He started. "I do. I remember you telling me to come down here. You…had something for me."

"Mmhmm." Hawke nodded. "Why did I ask you to come in here?"

Leto fidgeted as he glanced around the room. "It was night. Winternight? We were…celebrating?"

"Yes, we were. You had never had a real Winternight before. Your family in Tevinter couldn't really make much of a holiday, for obvious reasons. So, we'd decorated the house and put up this tree. I got you a present."

Leto was silent as he stared at the glittering Winternight tree, with wrapped packages now piled high beneath it. Internally, he was struggling, however. He knew this place and this mage but how? Where was Danarius? Where was the house in Minrathous? These had all been the same things a moment ago. But now, they were separating; breaking apart in time and space.

"You…" He murmured. "You wanted me to have…you."

Hawke's mouth quirked but he suppressed the full grin that threatened to take over his face. His boundless enthusiasm for moments like this one might not be yet well received. "Yeah. I did. Do you remember how that went?"

The elf scowled at him and his sudden non sequitur caught Hawke a little off guard. "Don't touch me!"

Hawke immediately raised both of his hands up in a non-threatening gesture. "I'm not touching you, Fenris. Not until you ask me to."

"And is that what you are saying I did? I asked you…to…"

The mage chuckled again. "Well, in this particular case, it was me asking you. But yes, you've asked me to touch you before. If you dig deep, I'm willing to bet you will remember that. All the way back to the first time we were ever together. You came to me. This was always your choice. It was always your decision. And it always will be."

"I remember…" Leto shuffled his feet and began to pace. "I remember being here. I think I did want to come here but I was…afraid. What was I afraid of?"

Hawke hazarded a guess but it wasn't exactly a stretch. "You were afraid of being chained again. Metaphorically if not physically. You were afraid that, in the end, I really was just another Danarius. A power-mad blood mage who would force you back into slavery. Or worse."

The reticent elf looked up at him as he shrugged, gazing pensively into the fire. "I was afraid of all of those things. Yes, that sounds right. But…they didn't happen. Did they?"

"No, Fen. You made your life your own. And then you shared it with me. Hadriana and Danarius are dead. They found you and returned to enslave you; that did happen. But we faced them together and now there is nothing out there that can do that to you ever again. I won't let it."

"A mage took my freedom. A mage gave it back to me."

Hawke nearly gasped when he saw the effect Leto's own words had on the manifestation of his form. The tips of his hair had slowly gone white again and the faintest outline of the lyrium tattoos could be seen just beneath the surface of his pale skin. The elf shuddered and scraped irritably at his arms; hardly seeming to notice the change.

"Hawke?" He finally asked; the mage perking at the first unprompted mention of his name. "Why am I still so afraid?"

"I don't know." The other replied. "I don't think that's a question I can answer. But I do have an idea how you might."

Leto shot him another warning look.

"Come here." Hawke sighed, motioning to the area of the divan next to him. "I'm not going to hurt you. Just…come here."

The elf approached slowly, cautiously. When he was within a few feet of the mage, Hawke then patted the seat at his side; indicating that the other should sit. Leto, however, opted to remain standing in front of him and crossed his arms as he stared down into exasperated blue eyes. Despite his reluctance and animosity, Hawke could see how Danarius had been attracted to Leto and also why he had named him Fenris. The thick, black, hair on his head was a bit wild and unkempt, his eyes piercing and predatory. As it bled to white, it made him look frost-bitten and the lines of his markings only served to highlight the lean, hungry, curves of his body. It had been a violation of the highest order, but Hawke understood the allure. And it made him hate the old magister even more for it.

"I'm here."

That was Fenris' voice! Every part his tone and inflection.

Hawke looked up and met the elf's eyes. With a slow breath, he made his move.

"Touch me."

"What?!"

"Touch me, Fen. Let me know you're still here. Please."

For several seconds, Hawke wasn't sure his lover was going to respond. Or, if he did, that he wasn't simply going to turn around and walk away. But he didn't. Instead, with great hesitation though , Leto merely reached a tentative hand up to tenderly lay his fingertips against the mage's cheek. That gentle touch was almost more than Hawke could bear. He grit his teeth and drew in a breath as the touch then left him, leaving a tremor in its wake. The mage's pulse hammered in his temples, and he honestly didn't think he would have been able to stand upright at that moment if their lives had literally depended on it. Maker, he was a mess right now.

Strangely, Leto broke the unbearable silence first; his low voice intruding on Hawke's ruminations.

"Liam." He said, the steadiness of the word hardly belying the slight trembling in his hand. "That's what I say to you when no one else can hear us. I call you Liam."

Tears stung his eyes, but Hawke answered him regardless. "Yes, you do. You're the only one who ever does."

"And you call me Fenris because…"

Hawke waited to hear him finish the thought.

"Because…that's my name."

The mage went very still, his gaze burning and his face growing hot. Leto still stood over him but rather than the pale, wan, elf from before, his skin had darkened in the golden light; reflecting, briefly, the dancing flames behind them before the ominous shadows of the room moved possessively over him again. In an instant, he both was and was not Fenris. The body and mien were the same but infused somehow with a keen awareness of a lifetime of conflicting memories. Some of which he knew and others which still remained locked away behind lyrium bars. Suffused throughout him, however, was a terrible loneliness, bent by sorrow and mourning, and desperate to hold on to any last possibility for salvation. It was so easy to want him this way.

In response, Hawke reached up and took a hold of Leto's hands; doing what he could to return some of the borrowed strength. He pushed the sadness from his mind and pulled the warm palms against his chest tightly, just over the nervous thump of his heart.

"Do you feel that?"

"Yes."

"That's yours."

"Mine?"

"Now and forever."

When Leto's thumb came up to stroke across his bottom lip, Hawke very nearly grabbed it in his teeth but stopped before he might startle the elf. The other didn't balk, however, and reached up again to lay his hand at the side of Hawke's neck.

"What do you want?" He whispered. It sounded so unsure and yet, so…hopeful?

"You, Fen. I've always wanted you."

"Will you…" He stopped, eyes still dropped down to stare, unseeing, at Hawke's chest.

"Will I?"

He breathed. "Touch me."

Hawke's smile at this couldn't be hidden and he beamed up at his volatile lover. "Of course, Fen. Do you remember how it was?"

Leto seemed to nod.

"Talk to me then." Hawke replied. "Tell me what you remember."

"I remember your hand on mine." He began. "That was how it started. You touched me, with your fingers on my wrist. And then your mouth there. Every time it was like a predictable pattern. Touch, wait, kiss…" He trailed off but Hawke continued to encourage him by following the lead of his words; touching his hand and then his wrist, waiting, and then raising the limb to his lips. Soon, he was leaving a line of easy kisses across the inside of his lover's forearm and over the pulse point at his wrist.

Hawke felt Leto's eyes on him as he moved down his arm, but no sound of protest was made and Leto seemed to follow the contact with an attentive gaze. Given no refusal, the mage then began to trace the faint lyrium tattoos with his fingers, and finally his lips, slowly stepping up the intensity of the touch so long as the elf wasn't resisting.

Leto then tensed, staring down resolutely at the subtle nubs of the divan's intricate weave, rather than focusing overmuch on what Hawke was doing with his mouth. He wanted this, deeply and intuitively, and that caught him off guard. It was easy to imagine that the desire he was now beginning to feel had simply sprung into existence, fully formed, in the instant that this man had first spoken his name but the sensations also made him feel a little like crystal, strong and fragile all at once. Leto continued to rivet his gaze on the swirling, hypnotic rhythm of the mage's tongue. The whole, unbidden, mental image of Hawke responsive beneath his touch was nearly too much for him to comprehend; so much so that an incautious look might have shattered his illusions to pieces.

"Is…is this…how I like to be touched?"

Hawke smiled against the warm skin at his lips. "Yes, but not specifically. You like it more when I run my hand down the inside of your thigh."

Leto swallowed hard.

"You like pressing back against it." Hawke continued. "I think it makes it feel like you're about to refuse but then you always relax into it. That's usually when you want me to find that little impression down by your collar bone and then up along the side of your neck. You always try to act like you don't notice it when I get there but its pretty clear that kissing you like that gets you hot."

The mage was slightly surprised to find Leto's fingers entwined into the front folds of his tunic, tugging insistently at his shirt as he drew closer to Hawke's seated figure.

"Does it?" He seemed to ask absently. "And do I…touch you like that too?"

Hawke chuckled but went along with it. "You do. You know what I want."

"And that is?"

"You tell me."

Cool, tentative, fingers rimmed his collar before dropping down onto his chest. Hawke could feel the gentle explorations acutely but he suppressed the moan that threatened to slip out of him as those same fingers gained a measure of confidence and began to undo the side buttons that held the garment in place. Leto, however, was now partially kneeling on the edge of divan in order to reach them and it allowed Hawke to subtly pull his smaller lover between his knees and ghost his lips over the places along the elf's throat he had only just mentioned.

A soft huff of excitement spurred him on.

Hawke maintained the barely-there contact as Leto continued to work the top of his tunic free. When he pulled it over the mage's head, the elf could feel his breath, warm and steady against his ear as he leaned into the larger man.

With a grunt, Hawke suddenly pulled him solidly into his lap, causing Leto to immediately grab onto his shoulders or risk tipping off the furniture entirely. But even though a contented sigh rumbled through the mage's broad chest, the elf began to fight him.

"Let go of me." He hissed, the tremor of panic shaking both his voice and his limbs.

"Why?" Came Hawke's response.

"Because…. I…." He stuttered but was held fast.

"Because why, Fenris?"

"Because I TOLD you to!"

Immediately, he was released and set down onto the divan; Hawke turning and opening his arms to allow Leto to slump backwards into the rolled plush backrest. The elf was panting slightly but Hawke couldn't tell just how much of a mixture of fear and arousal it was, since it appeared to be quite a bit of both. But Leto stared at him with a hard gaze, searching his face for some kind of answer as to what had just happened.

"And that's the difference, Fen." He said. "If you don't want me, it's the end of it."

A sliver of light flickered across the elf's skin; tracing down from his shoulder, beneath his tunic, to reappear on his arm and through his fingers. A second spark then appeared at his chin, dancing down his throat until it settled onto his sternum. His hair had gone whiter but remained black at the crown of his head.

"If you don't want me." Leto repeated, seeming to taste Hawke's own words in his mouth with a look of disgust.

"That's right." The mage replied. "You could get up and walk out right now. You can just leave, Fenris."

Leto's eyes flashed up at him, his breath catching in his throat. "No!"

The shout startled him and Hawke leaned back pensively.

"No." The elf said again, softer this time. "I…" He seemed to ruminate on his thoughts rather harshly. "I've already made that mistake. A terrible mistake… and it almost cost me everything. Didn't it?"

"I'm…not…" Hawke was quite decidedly unsure at this point precisely what Fenris was referring to.

"Three years I lost."

Oh. That's what he meant.

"Three years and I almost lost you."

Hawke reached out a hand and was pleased when the elf raised his to take it. "You weren't going to lose me, Fen. I wasn't going anywhere and there was never anyone else."

"Anders wanted there to be."

Hawke actually snorted. Anders and Fenris had never gotten along; not for all the years he had known and worked with the both of them. But even more so, Anders had never forgiven Hawke for pursuing intimacy with the elf and had never forgiven Fenris for accepting it. Equally so, Fenris still harbored years of ill will towards Anders' obsession with the mage and had never let it go that he had tried to replace him in Hawke's affections (and his bed) during their separation.

"I know." Was all he said, though.

When Leto suddenly sat up and straight-forwardly crawled back onto his lap, Hawke smiled and happily accepted him. With feather-light kisses to the elf's jaw and along the ridge of his ear, the mage murmured his comforts to a much more responsive companion.

"I love you. I want you. I've always wanted you. I need you. Here. Close to me."

Leto sighed and relaxed again under the exquisitely gentle touch, tipping his head slightly this way or that to freely expose the most vulnerable parts of himself. Hawke's pulse throbbed firmly under his palms as the mage nuzzled him inquisitively. Kissing, tasting, stroking, his face, his mouth, the taut skin of his neck. It was as though the man beneath him wanted to know every scant inch of him; every hollow, every rise. As if he were reading him like book, fallen open to the best pages; pored over again and again in secret.

Leto cupped the squared jaw lightly; tipping Hawke's face up into the brush of his lips. His blue eyes opened then, moist with emotion but dark with desire. Leto searched his lover's face, wanting to remember this moment forever; to hold onto the memory of the mage's heartbeat as a shield against all the sorrows the future could bring. To ensure that some part of them lived here, in this ethereal place, forever. This was because he had finally understood something he'd been unable to before. Leto belonged to Danarius, and it was time he buried him along with the rest of the dead. Fenris was something else entirely. It was as though he were split in two: Leto, who lived in the Fade and in the long-ago memories that had shaped his existence and Fenris, whose world was living, breathing, real, and now. As such, there was really only one thing left to do.

He leaned down to kiss Liam Hawke in earnest.

The sweet taste of the mage consumed Fenris as he leisurely explored the other's mouth, stroking his bottom lip with his teeth and the tip of his tongue. He savored the moment along with the wonderful, dizzying feeling it instilled in him. He then tugged at Hawke's lip again, encouraging him to open further, to allow him to deepen the kiss.

Hawke, for his part, could remain passive no longer, and began slowly wandering over Fenris' shoulders; squeezing, pulling the slighter elf to him as the intensity of their contact hastened his exploration. Fenris fought the urge to break from his lover but he wanted his own tunic off so that he could finally give in to the touch-hunger he felt. So instead, he pushed one hand between their bodies to resume divesting the mage of his belt and other accoutrements.

In their still dream-like state, the clothing came away with a muted exhalation and a slight twist of Hawke's torso. Fenris then began to run his hands over the broad shoulders and across his chest as if he were mapping them; testing his mate until the mage pulled away from the press of their mouths with a tight gasp.

He looked up and the smile that greeted Fenris was utterly devastating.

Because it was undeniably Fenris' eyes he looked into now. Leto was gone; vanished back into the ether of half-remembered terrors. From the mess of white hair tangled into threads over his forehead to the bright lyrium markings that made his appearance so distinctive, it was Fenris. It had always been Fenris.

Hawke plucked at his lover's tunic inquiringly, as if anticipating the other's reactions. "Please?" He whispered hoarsely. "Please, I need to touch you."

Fenris could only nod mutely before shucking the thin garment in one smooth movement that exposed his lean, sleekly muscled, chest to Hawke's burning stare. But the mage's hands were hesitant as they drifted over the spare framework of Fenris' shoulders, pausing to follow the familiar outlines of his tattoos and lingering over the whorls beneath his ears. Fenris sighed and leaned forward into the touch. Down his back it roamed, shyly skirting the ties of his leggings to circle around his narrow waist. Fenris caught his breath as the mage's hands then moved down to grip his hips as Hawke rolled almost imperceptibly beneath him; putting delightful pressure on his groin with his hips.

The slow, easy, pace of their affections was making Fenris crazy with desire. He wanted to crawl inside of Hawke's presence and shelter there forever, pulling the warm feelings around him like a wool blanket to the cold. Not to hide. Not this time. He wanted only to be immersed and then to drown in the love he felt in every caress and in every whispered word. It required every ounce of his self-control to keep from just throwing the both of them to the floor and rutting against the mage until one or both of them reached climax. He grabbed for the hem of Hawke's pants, roughly jerking open the front as he indicated the depths of his lust with a short, involuntary, thrust.

Hawke's hand tightened over Fenris' backside, clutching the elf to him as their mouths met again. But this kiss was no tentative caress, but rather an urgent communication of hunger. The rising need to touch and be touched, to be part of the give and take of mutual pleasure was overriding everything else. And here, in the soft glow of the living room at Winternight, they felt utterly safe and protected. Nothing living, dead, or spirit could breach this wall.

Hawke sat patiently on the divan as Fenris rose up and fairly tore the remaining clothes from his body and the from Hawke's. The elf then paused to sweep an admiring gaze over his lover before easing him back onto the cushions and pillows haphazardly placed there.

To the mage's relative excitement, he watched as Fenris surrendered to the yearning and deftly climbed over him, resting his knees on either side of Hawke's hips. It was position they'd only used on few occasions, but Hawke found it to be especially enticing. He loved to watch Fenris move freely and to take his pleasure as he wanted it. For now, however, the elf simply used his lover's prone position to touch him without restriction, to press down against him so that each subtle movement would bring the heady glide of skin on skin. He kissed Hawke again, briefly, still unable to sate himself with the other's mouth but no longer content to remain there any longer. Fenris wanted something more.

Hawke's entire body shuddered, and he let out a low groan when Fenris suddenly slid down his body, found his erection, and took him into his mouth. The pleasure was inhumanly cruel, and the mage growled again as each nip, flick of his tongue, or suckle brought him closer and closer to release without actually ever letting him fall into that welcoming abyss. Hawke mumbled something vulgar. Fenris had never exactly been shy about doing this for him but right now, it just wasn't what he wanted.

With great effort he leaned up, lifting that sweetly tortuous mouth from him. It wasn't that he didn't enjoy lying back and letting Fenris tease him but there was a greater satisfaction he needed right now. And that could only come from his lover's enjoyment as well.

"Come back up here." Hawke panted. "I need to see you."

Fenris gave a wan but tempered smile and nodded as he returned to straddling the mage.

Hawke had always appreciated the spare utility of Fenris' body. The long lines and smooth muscles pared down, distilled into the bare essence of fortitude. In a moment of insight, Hawke realized just how the elf had managed to survive his years of Imperial enslavement. Fenris was much like the broadsword he carried: no excess, no frivolity, no pointless ornamentation; just a minimal, deadly, form and singularity of purpose. Any beauty in the otherwise functional design was purely incidental.

But Fenris _was_ beautiful and Hawke wanted him.

It didn't escape the mage, however, that the logistics of pairing with his lover in the Fade might be more complicated than he'd anticipated. While he might be able to stretch the usually tight elf as he typically did before taking him, he had nothing to wet him with and no way to ease the pain of his initial penetration. He didn't want to hurt Fenris; especially not at such a pivotal moment like this.

Fenris, on the other hand, didn't seem to register the dilemma in the slightest. Instead, he merely sat up to brace one hand on Hawke's chest while he used the other to grasp onto the mage's spit-slickened manhood and guide it into himself as he pressed back down onto his lover's hips. When, at first, his body didn't give and Fenris pressed harder, Hawke was just about to stop him out of fear of injury when he suddenly felt the pressure break and he sunk into Fenris to the hilt with a choked shout. The other's body had a strangle hold on him and the mage immediately grabbed onto Fenris' hips to prevent him from moving for a moment.

To Hawke's surprise, Fenris didn't appear to be at all hurt by the unprepared penetration and gazed down at him passively. If he had felt any pain at their union, he wasn't showing it.

"Are…" Hawke had to swallow to get his voice to work again. "Are you alright?"

The gentle, loving, smile that followed told Hawke that his lover was, indeed, quite fine. And also, quite in control. Fenris began to move first; an easy rocking motion that barely parted them before the mage was reseated in overwhelming heat and tension. He kept both hands on Hawke's chest, anchoring himself so that he could maintain the pace he wanted and encourage his lover to join him in the ebb and flow of their instinctual rhythm.

And so he did. Each time Fenris rose up and then descended, Hawke would thrust; just in time to meet him as he came down onto the mage's thighs. But Hawke was keen to allow Fenris complete command here. This is what made their connection different from the horrors of Fenris' past and this is what would break the chains of intrusive memory; the fact that Fenris could choose this, deny it, submit to it, or lead it. Leto had never had that control and had never been granted the autonomy to refuse an advance but Fenris was the master here.

As such, when his lover reached out to grasp his hand and pull it to his own arousal, Hawke gladly began to stroke him in time with their coupling. Fenris was now moving against him in short, hard, thrusts and, to the mage's fascination, was using his other hand to touch along his own neck and onto his chest. It was magnificent to watch him undone like this.

When Hawke then felt him tense, intentionally curling forward slightly, he shifted and angled himself so that he would strike Fenris deeply; in just the way that he had learned would set the elf off. He was rewarded with a rattling moan as Fenris ground his hips back, shoving his lover as deep as he could force him. It was all he needed. Hawke held tight against the shudder of Fenris' release, listening to his stifled cry as he was given over to a wrenching orgasm. He then heard a single exclamation snarled in Tevene as Fenris rolled against him in fervent desperation as he spent himself onto the mage's shifting abdomen below.

It was bliss as Hawke pulled Fenris down into his embrace. He pressed his face into the vulnerable nape of the elf's neck, while they shattered the world together.

Pieces.

Shards everywhere.

Falling.

Into nothingness.


	10. Chapter 10

**Fabula Purus, Tabula Rasa**

"Aras Telvani."

Mariner smiled. It had been a very long time since he had heard that name from anyone but the most esoterically-minded spirits. And here it was coming from someone who might himself be mistaken for little more than a simple ruffian. But the _ashvani_ knew better. He knew who hunted him.

"Fen'Harel."

Solas frowned but did not immediately protest. "You were never keen before in calling me that. But I suppose I deserve it. I have certainly earned it in the time since you knew me."

To the elder elf's surprise, gentle fingers found his chin and tipped his head up to face the other.

"Perhaps." The _ashvani_ replied. "But I would call you Solas if you should remember my name as well."

He almost smiled at that. His lover had always been playful like this; teasing him and gamboling about even when it came to their casual banter.

"Maera." He stated succinctly, subtly tilting his cheek into the warmth of Mariner's palm. "I have always known your name."

"Yes." The _ashvani_ answered. But when the White Hart suddenly closed in on him, Solas had only seconds to react before the other gracefully knelt down, folded his feet underneath him, and came to rest sideways on his lap. He made something of a bewildered sound but quickly wrapped his arms around the _ashvani's_ waist; not hesitating in the slightest to take the opportunity to secure him in place and pull him closer. In fact, Mariner seemed to have decided on the position for no other reason than to assure Solas that he had no intention of running from him again. At least, not at the present.

As if he had been waiting for this very moment, or something like it, Solas pressed his forehead into the other's chest. Breathing in his scent, hearing the sound of his heartbeat, feeling him shift subtly back and forth in his arms. Mariner raised his hands to drift curious fingertips over Solas' bare scalp, his thumb tracing the memory of braids and long locks from his temples to his ears and down onto the nape of his neck. When Solas felt him then press a gentle kiss onto the top of his bowed head, he smiled.

"Yes." He replied to the unspoken question. "I shaved it not long after I awoke. Relic of a bygone era, either way."

But as though he suddenly thought better of the latter part, Solas quickly entwined his own fingers into the soft, white, wisps nearest to Mariner's waist. When he tugged lightly on the strands, Mariner answered with implied understanding.

"Don't worry, I have no intention of shearing it. I am not so inclined to shed my mien in that way."

Solas turned his head up to look into thoughtful blue eyes he'd long believed he would never see alive again. The sparkle of mirth there warmed him more than any fire could and he found himself pleading in a gaze; desperately trying to communicate what he could not say otherwise. Mariner leaned forward in response to his call.

The kiss that followed was tentative at first. Unsure but unafraid. A slow, hesitant, meeting as Mariner touched his lips to the offered ones below him before parting them with the tip of his tongue to begin a deeper study. He felt the pained moan from the man kneeling on the ground beneath him but also noticed the sudden clenching of his hands into the back of his coat.

At last, they shared their first kiss. The first in an Age. The first, perhaps, to be remembered for another millennium to come.

Solas felt the tremble run down his back and he was not at all pleased by the immediate physical response his body was having to the passionate contact. He'd been so far removed for so long. So much so, apparently, that he was fast becoming a shamble of himself; and all from just the mildest of loving touches. He broke the kiss and leaned back but still maintained his firm grip on the smaller elf.

"I'm sorry." Was the first thing that came out of him.

"For what?" Mariner asked, his voice still tender.

"You…should not have come. You _should_ run from me, Maera. You should get as far from me and from this place as you possibly can. Abandon me. I will bring you nothing but sorrow."

"Solas." He breathed, once again running soothing fingertips over the elder elf's face and neck. "You already know the answer to that. I could no more leave you to the vagaries of Fate than I could stop the trees from growing towards the sky. It is my nature."

"You were a spirit, Maera!" Solas hissed vehemently, turning his face back down and closing his eyes in shame. "You became flesh and took form, and for that…you were brought nothing but death! You died…because…you loved me. I perverted you from your purpose."

"And yet…" Mariner laughed, even biting lightly at the tip of a ready ear. "I am not a demon. Am I? …Am I, Solas?"

"No." It was more breath than word. "No, vhenan. You are no demon."

"So." The _ashvani_ tilted his head to regard the downcast other. "My purpose must remain then."

Solas held him in silence, their mingled breath floating away on icy winds that seemed to steal their words just as much as it pulled at their mutual warmth. Here, they were both refugees; apostates in a world of reverence that worshipped everything the light did not touch. Huddled together at the onset of winter at a time when it should have been spring.

Mariner spoke first. "Solas? Would you do something for me?"

"What would you like?" He replied, hoping his tone would sound neutral despite the fact that his hands were still white-knuckled in the folds of the _ashvani's_ caravan coat.

"Stay with me. Tonight."

"What?" Solas understood exactly what he meant, of course. His exclamation coming out more as a declaration of surprise than confusion.

"Be with me tonight. As we once were. I need you."

"Maera, I don't know if we-" he started to pull away but Mariner, as it seemed, was quicker than him now and swung his opposite leg over Solas' hip to straddle him so that he couldn't move without the both of them tumbling to the ground.

"Please?" He asked, holding the other elf firmly in place between his thighs and ghosting a wanton kiss along the elder's jawline.

Solas was studying the _ashvani's_ expression, his eyes searching across his entire face...For what, Mariner wasn't entirely sure. Perhaps he was worried that they would be discovered? He needn't. The Caravan was asleep and their position on the margins was not in view. Or maybe he was looking for doubt. He wouldn't find it...Mariner knew what he was asking for.

"But…we've never...I mean, such as we are right now…" he trailed off. He looked so vulnerable.

"I know. And I am, in this form, untouched." Mariner whispered before placing another soft kiss against the other's lips. "I've felt you before, but only in the Fade...and other than that, no one. I've thought of you though, have yearned for you without knowing why. And with every passing day the need only grows. Do not force me apart from you now. Please, vhenan. Garas inas em. (Come with me.)"

"Where would you have me?" he said quietly.

Mariner rose up and offered his hand. When Solas accepted it, he pulled him up from the ground and led him towards the rear of the caravan, to a house-wagon set at the road's edge. It was dark, save for a single Veilfire candle in the back window; flickering pale blue light barely a few feet out into the night. The wagon itself was painted in muted tones, which was somewhat unusual for an Elusivir vardo. They tended to prefer bright, almost garish, color combinations such as red, yellow, orange, and green. The lintels of this threshold were blue, however, and the rest of the simple dwelling was painted white with dry-brushed lavender and grey. The lack of ornate carvings also told Solas that this vardo was relatively new in its construction and looked as though no one had really been living in it.

"Arla Melenal" Mariner replied to Solas' puzzled expression. "The Waiting House. All caravans keep one house empty at the back of the line. It is used for unexpected guests… and for the dead."

Solas shot him a concerned look.

"No!" The _ashvani_ laughed. "I mean that it is a place where spirits are encouraged to reside should they wish to follow along for a time. Not that we are in the habit of catacombing bodies in a vardo."

Placated, Solas followed his lover into the small wagon-house. The inside was almost as equally minimal as its exterior. A single long room with plank flooring comprised the entirety of the inside living space, with several small cabinets for storage, a shelf containing a few favored old books, and a down bed on a lofted platform at the far end. Aside from that, it did not appear to contain any kind of random knick-knacks one might expect of a home with inhabitants but it did have a soft, wool, rug set as a runner from the bed to the door and a kind of wardrobe closet with a few coats and tunics hung out of the way. Altogether, it was cramped; barely large enough for one or two people to live intimately but it was out of the elements and comfortingly warm.

Careful not to disturb the other's casual inspection, Mariner quietly closed the door behind them and set the pale candle onto a short, wooden, ledge that had been built just beneath the porthole in the door: an indication that any Elusivir would know that the vardo was currently claimed.

"Maera, is this your home?" Solas suddenly asked, turning to meet the _ashvani_ as he approached him from behind.

Mariner smiled. "Avenant keeps it for me, for whenever I am here and about. But it is not mine, specifically, if that is what you mean."

"You did not have a vardo among your people?"

"Not a solitary one. I lived with my grandmothers. The Caravani _asha_ who raised me after I was brought to them."

Solas had so many more questions about Aras Tevani's life in this world of the Veil that he wanted to ask. How much did he remember of their shared past and of the fate that had befallen him? How had he returned to the world and when? What had his life among the Elusivir been like? Where was he going after this? But now was not the time. The cycles of life and nature demanded something else of them at the moment and it could not be denied. Mariner beckoned him and he was helpless to resist. When the _ashvani_ reached the edge of the bed and pulled him down into the soft bedclothes, he went willingly.

Despite the passage of innumerable years, they were used to each other like this. Memory lent them experience to the point of Solas' warm, dexterous, hands touching the smaller elf in tantalizingly familiar ways; plying open the buttons of his coat and impatiently plucking at the thin shift underneath. Despite sensing each other's arousal, they nipped and dallied, relearning each curve and plane in a tentative exchange that might almost have been called chaste: so much was it controlled and decorous. Beneath the surface, however, Solas' mind was in utter pandemonium. It had been a very long time since he'd lain with anyone and a virgin Hart was enough to both terrify and seduce him. His thoughts were little more than wreckage and his body was shuddering with the force of his restraint. It was almost shameful. What a broken, pathetic, besotted, man he'd become.

Mariner sighed breathily into their kiss as Solas' hand began to wander his bare thigh. He was being careful and so very gentle, trying to ensure that everything he did was pleasurable. Some part of him also still seemed tense and poised to chase the _ashvani_ down again if it came to that. As though he would leap up from the bed at any moment and race out the door into the moonlit moor.

"Solas." Mariner whimpered softly against his lover's mouth. The other shivered at the sound.

"Are…are you certain?" The elder whispered; his breath hot against the other's neck. "Do you want this?"

"Yes." Mariner almost chuckled before kissing him lightly on the cheek. "Don't be afraid, Solas. Just feel me close to you."

Their lips met again and the elder _ash_ moved to place himself between his lover's thighs, his arms supporting his upper half on either side of the _ashvani's_ torso. Mariner quickly wrapped his arms around Solas' neck to pull him flush against his body, sighing at the twinges it created at his core. Mariner heard his lover sigh as well and it caused him to smile a bit too smugly into their kiss. When the other elf went to pull away, Mariner gently bit his lower lip before looking up at him. Solas looked…apprehensive. But there was also something else in his eyes.

"What is it?"

"I…just wasn't expecting this." He replied. One of Solas' hands then came up to brush a stray lock of hair from Mariner's forehead before he leaned down again to lay a few necessary kisses along his neck.

Again, Mariner couldn't suppress the soft laughter. How his Dread Wolf had changed. The memories he had pieced together over the past year from fragments of his former self had been strange but enlightening. The elf he remembered had been brazen and arrogant; assured of his own honor and cleverness, and confident in his manner. A trickster who moved just as easily in high-brow circles as he did among the most wretched but a man also possessed of deep compassion, equanimity, and a sense of justice. That elf was still here and he could feel him pressing down against him now, but he had also grown old. So old; in mind if not in body. His heart was broken and his will bent but resolved. He was so much more the elder now and he bore a great weight on a weary soul.

Then let this be his respite.

Mariner angled his head to give Solas better access and moaned when his breath touched sensitive skin. He then bit back a soft gasp when fingers found the tender skin of his thigh again and his eyes fluttered shut as they began to travel farther and farther up. Mariner had never physically done this before but marveled at how natural it felt, how familiar. It was a confusing dichotomy: having been Solas' lover for centuries before this and yet feeling his touch for the first time in his life.

He leaned up and kissed Solas again and held his face there, ravishing him. When he began to nip along his bottom lip and onto his jaw, his lover growled.

It was then Solas turn to moan when a hand slid down his body to caress him over his leggings. Mariner had no trouble feeling how aroused his lover was, but now they could share it. Suddenly, the elder elf pulled back from the too-intimate touch and sat up. Mariner thought to follow him, to persuade him to return back down to the bed, but he didn't. Opting instead to observe whatever his lover had in mind next.

Solas reached down and quickly undid his belt so that he could pull his tunic-shirt and wolf-jaw pendant over his head and drop it all to the floor. Seeing his lean chest bare took Mariner's breath away in an instant. He loved Solas' body; the tight, hard, planes of his torso, the wonderfully soft skin of his shoulders and back. How the Hart had loved to dig his fingers into the fleshier bits of him and hold on as his lover took him, and Mariner was quite eager for that experience now. How handsome Solas was really, despite his insistence on burying himself beneath layer upon layer of wool, cloaks, and wrappings.

To the elder's surprise, Mariner rolled up onto his knees in front of him and ran his fingers down his chest and over his stomach; the muscles of which twitched from the contact. It would seem that Solas' body remembered a few things about him too.

The _ashvani_ leaned forward and kissed his lover's collar bones as his fingers continued to memorized every bit of Solas he could reach. Mariner didn't want to forget any of this, not knowing how soon it would be before they saw each other again. As he kissed and teased, he felt the other's hands slide up to the clasps of his coat. After a moment, both coat and shift were undone and maneuvered over his shoulders with an insistent pull. Somewhat shyly, Mariner helped him by pulling his arms out of the sleeves so that the entirety of the traditional garment could be freed. He wore nothing else beneath it, as was his habit really, and heard the sound Solas made on this discovery.

Suddenly, he was a little nervous. The only other time he'd been exposed to someone like this had been in the estate in Amaranthine; at Gallio Ravenica's insistence. The Serenic slaver had not harmed him as an immediate result per se, but his only recent memory of being so physically unguarded to another person had been under duress and in the wake of threats to take him by force if he did not present a more submissive demeanor to his would-be master. Disconcertingly, Solas seemed to immediately intuit his discomfort.

"Have I offended you?" He asked.

"No." Mariner replied with immediacy. "It's just…It's not that I find any of this disagreeable, it's only that…well…the last time I was in this position, it was…"

"The slave trader, I know."

Mariner couldn't hide the shock in his expression.

"I've been looking for you a long time, Maera." Solas soothed, his hands coming up to frame his lover's pensive face. "I tracked you to Amaranthine but you had already escaped. Had you not, of course, I would have aided you. But when I could not discern where you had gone, I followed the slave master, Ravenica, to the estate he kept in Minrathous. I had thought I might find a clue to your route if I found him first. When I arrived, he was already planning another raid against the Elusivir and was employing magic to find you as well. I…could not allow him to do that."

Mariner stared back at him with a mixture of concern and surprise. So much had happened in those few, torturous, days but he hadn't imagined that Solas had already been in pursuit of him or that he possibly could have been so close to finding him before he'd even had the first inkling himself of what was going on.

"You killed him?"

"I did."

Mariner nodded but couldn't tear his gaze away from the intense stare of Solas' stormy grey eyes.

"I couldn't bear the thought that he'd hurt you. That he would hurt you again…" The words were both harsh and fraught with emotion but instead of arguing the point, Mariner simply came forward again and kissed the trembling rage from his lover's form. He embraced Solas tightly, not letting the shivers or quakes escape him and he once again pulled him as close as physically possible; letting his presence comfort the other with warmth and welcome.

"You are…so beautiful." He whispered against the _ashvani's_ mouth.

At once, all of Mariner's nerves were gone and he was smiling happily. "And you." He whispered as he lay back down. Solas followed him this time, again supporting himself with his hands on either side of his lover's head as he placed more soft kisses down the _ashvani's_ jaw, onto his neck, and across his shoulder. Warily, Mariner reached between them to undo Solas' pants. He was on edge and had been for too long now. He needed to touch him, to feel him, to see him. Once the ties were unthreaded, he impatiently pushed at the waistband, hoping Solas would get the hint.

He did.

The elder elf pushed the leggings off of his hips and kicked them to the floor where they joined his tunic and everything else in a disorganized pile. Apparently, he'd finally stripped himself of everything he might have had underneath his clothes as well because when Mariner looked down all he saw was him.

He couldn't help but stare for a moment. After a second, however, he felt so foolish about it that he blushed and turned away, not wanting to see if Solas had had any sort of reaction to his uncharacteristic innocence. The paradox of having one's life-long lover for the first time was wreaking havoc with his rationale just as much as the sensations of holding Solas close were wreaking havoc with his body. Either way, the elder answered it with a kiss, weaving his fingers back into the long, white, hair before settling onto the slighter form beneath him.

The soft, responsive, moan was all he needed.

Suddenly, Mariner felt his lover at his entrance and tensed. When Solas paused again, Mariner looked up at him. The expression he was met with was serious and worried.

"Are you ready?" he whispered.

"Yes." Mariner replied before pulling Solas' lips to his own.

And then, he felt him move. Entering him slowly, trying not to hurt him. It really didn't so much hurt, however, as it was strained. Tight and barely yielding. Joining physically was already so different than making love in the Fade. The pressure was intense, and yet felt incredible. Like it would tear him but also thoroughly tantalize him. The deeper Solas went, the more intense the combination of pain and pleasure became, and Mariner broke away from his lips and mewled, opening his legs wider as his lover pressed into him. Solas' breathing was heavy as he rested his forehead on his lover's shoulder. What Mariner would have given to hear his thoughts at that moment.

"Maera," he groaned underneath his breath, as if offering up a prayer to the temple he now worshipped within.

"Now." Mariner sighed, tentatively tightening and relaxing his internal muscles in response to the hard length inside of him.

Without challenging him, as he half expected the Dread Wolf might, he thrust forward, and Mariner let out a loud gasp. He wasn't quite sure if it was of pain or pleasure because at that moment, he was feeling both. It was a spearing wound he wouldn't have traded for the universe.

"Solas…sal…" He whispered into his shoulder. (Elvhen: Solas…again…)

His lover didn't reply other than a chest-deep sigh near to his ear.

Aras Telvani could have stayed like this forever. Just him and Fen'Harel, together like this, with no one and nothing else between them but passion and desire. It was enough to keep him satisfied until the day they died. It would have to, because the future that now stretched out before them was filled with darkness, loneliness, and despair. But he had this moment, this single perfect encapsulation of time, and they would return here, again and again, whenever they might need it.

And then Solas started to move in earnest. Languidly though, as to cause his lover as little pain as possible. Mariner chuffed again and bit into his lower lip as the first stabs of unbelievable pleasure shot through him each time the elder sank inside his body. Their rhythm became familiar to him again and as his body accepted its mate, Mariner could barely feel any more pain. Now, he needed him faster...harder...something!

"Solas!" He gasped, curling his nails into the other's back. Then, with a wicked grin, he growled something else into his ear. "Ver em, vhenan. Vaslana em." (Elvhen: "Take me, my love. Tame me.)

Solas instantly complied, moving faster and deeper, but still holding back. Mariner groaned, arching into him. But their pace meant that he could no longer hold him, his fists then tangling into the blanket beneath them. Mariner could tell that Solas was just as affected, though. He was trying not to, but couldn't help the litany of moans, sighs, and exclamations that burst past his lips with each thrust. Soon, he was squeezing handfuls of his lover's hair and slowly entwining it around his wrist so as to force the _ashvani's_ head back and expose his throat. It wasn't painful. It only added to their connection as instinct won over.

"Yes." Mariner hissed, wrapping his legs tightly around Solas' waist. He was careening toward that ledge and his lover seemed intent on dragging him over it without a moment to reconsider. Fleetingly, Mariner imagined just how infuriated Ravenica, the Tevinter magister of his previous adventures, would be to know just the kind of elven mating he going to miss out on. Of what would be created between them; of the magic that no mage would ever reach. The man was already dead of course, but the mental revenge was still sweet.

Seconds later though, his mind forgot everything. Solas held him tightly, moving deep. Punctuating his breaths with hard thrusts and his teeth sinking into the tender skin at the base of his throat. Mariner's back arched, his eyes shut tight, and his mouth opening wide in a gasp of pure ecstasy as he fell over the edge. It came upon him as a flood; a dam breaking in his soul and then rushing out to fill the cracks in his fragile form. The sensations were more than Mariner had imagined they might be, wringing him out like so much cloth on a dyer's wheel and leaving him breathless and dazed.

It was also enough for Solas. He gripped his lover's hips, desperate to keep him steady as he rode the first wave of his peak. Trying to temper his quickening pace but at the same time enjoying every bit of the body below him when he was able to slow down. It was as if they had never actually been apart and he loved his mate with everything he had. Reveling in being one once again with the other side of his soul.

"Oh!" he groaned and Mariner felt a deep contraction in his body as Solas pulled him hard against his hips and gasped, stilling the _ashvani_ with him fully inside as he lost all bearings on his senses and met his release. Mariner could feel the heat of him as Solas tensed and gave his seed into his body. Arched and pinning him as the instinctual undulations cascaded through the both of them. Pairing with an _ashvani_ was always this way, as Solas had learned long ago in his youth. Sultry, surging, and primal, with his lover calling out his name again and scratching sharp nails into his chest as everything tightened around him.

Solas collapsed, dropping his face into the waves of hair fanning out, through his fingers, over his arm, and awash onto the bed. With a contented noise, he gingerly kissed a mark he had already left on Mariner's neck before releasing his head and sliding off to his side. No words were necessary in the following moments and the two elves merely nestled into one another beneath the warmth of the down coverlet. The snow had also begun to fall again outside of the vardo, but the old lovers paid it no mind. They were already far away, cavorting and rollicking through the Fade as they would do for the rest of the night and all the following day and evening after.


	11. Chapter 11

**Catharsis**

When Solas awoke late in the morning he was alone but, truthfully, he'd expected to be. That Maera was gone, along with the entire caravan, was something he had anticipated. Sad, but assumed. What he did find surprising was where he was. By all recollections, he should be somewhere on the plateau just outside of the valley, but he wasn't. He was back at Skyhold, having fallen asleep in the rotunda.

He could also hear someone shuffling around behind him. When he turned, he was again surprised to see Cole, who, from what he could tell, was really not paying much attention to him personally but was rather focused on observing his frescoes, which now adorned almost every wall in the lower part of the castle.

On hearing him stir, the boy looked up with a broad smile.

"Hello!" He exclaimed, as though meeting Solas for the first time.

"Cole." Solas replied. More of an acknowledgement than a question.

"I'm happy you're back, I was worried. Too many voices from too many places, I couldn't tell which ones were close and which ones were far away." Cole continued to tumble over his words in his usual characteristic fashion. "But now they've all gone away again but he didn't leave you, not really, not ever. He's waiting, only waiting, for you to find him again. At the point where your roads cross again. Just up ahead."

Solas immediately recalled something Maera had said to him, whispered in his ear the night before as they drifted into sleep, and back across the Veil.

"For millennia, we lived as two. The Lovers who protected the world in their embrace. But now, the Dread Wolf walks a lonely path. The dinan'shiral; to its inevitable destination which is death. I cannot take this road alongside you, my love. I cannot travel at your side. You knew this when it all began. But I will meet you again at its end. I will wait for you, as I had waited for you in life, so now I must wait for you in death. You come to me because you must, knowing that we are never truly parted. And so, the Lovers have now passed, as they must, to another. To one abandoned in the Fade and the one who could never leave his side. But do not lament the Elvhenilde, vhenan. They burn brightly on the horizon. And I will wait for you ...to the bitter end. Whatever you choose."

His words were fading.

"May the Dread Wolf never hear your steps."

Solas brought his head up sharply to regard Cole's unexpected phrasing. "What did you say?"

"That's what _he_ said." The younger man pleaded in response to Solas' unexpected anger. "Yes? No? But I heard it! He calls to them now. To all of them. They feel the heart beating again. There is a hearth again. A home."

"Cole." Solas finally brought his hand up to still the compassionate spirit. "Please, do not speak any more of this. These are dangerous things and I am afraid that the others will not understand."

"Oh, I'm hurting you!" He answered with a gasp. "I'll not do that again. But…"

"But?"

"May I watch in your paintings? I want to see where it goes."

Solas sighed and nodded but he was still preoccupied. The blur between dreaming and awake was getting harder and harder for him to separate and finding himself back at Skyhold, with no memory of having traversed the distance from plateau to castle, was unsettling. The last two days had not been a simple Fade Walk, he knew that much. He had been out in the woods, he had seen the temple ruin, and he had lain with Maera once more; in a vardo on the grassy plain overlooking the valley. The _ashvani_ had been real and warm and alive in his arms again. No fleeting moment stolen in a dream, but raw and physical as only mortal lovers could be. He would never forget that feeling, not for as long as he lived.

But now, without a doubt, the Elusivir were gone. Vanished, presumably without a trace. As though they had never been there. But Solas knew that they had. They had only moved on. Led, who knows where and who knows how, by the White Hart. Who would keep them all until the very end.

His end.

* * *

Liam Hawke awoke slowly; coming up out of sleep to the muted crackle of his bedroom fireplace. It was complete darkness where he was, all save for a tiny crack of orange light seeping through the seam in the bed curtains near his shoulder. He was warm and comfortable, resting at home as he had been now for almost a week.

Hawke didn't really recall how they'd gotten back to Kirkwall. After the chaos of the Fade, he could only remember bits and pieces of what had happened. He remembered getting trapped in the fight with Corypheus; turning back to face the pursuing demons as Alastair and the Inquisitor had escaped, he remembered Fenris finding him on the desolate barrens of the nightmare, and he remembered Leto; angry and despairing in the depths of the abyss. But not much after that, to be honest. There had been some kind of commotion, a searing split of pain and light, and Mariner's voice. Or, someone who'd sounded an awful lot like the _ashvani_, anyway. Chanting. And then the creak of wagons and stomping horses on the road. Fenris talking to him, soothing him, and telling him to hold on. To stay with him. Not that Hawke had any intention of going anywhere, of course, but apparently he'd just been far more exhausted and injured than he'd appreciated in the moment.

He'd woken up two days later at his mansion in Hightown. Orana had been bustling about and Fenris hovering. Since then, his lover had barely afforded him any leave for activity beyond basic mobility between the bedroom and his chair in the living room; piled with pillows and blankets that changed every day. Fenris had also said very little about what all had transpired. Only that Varric had sent him a letter informing everyone of Hawke's untimely demise, that he and Mariner had then come looking for him in the Fade (though he still wasn't sure how yet), and that it was the Arda Elusivir, Mariner's people, who had somehow pulled them from the near-dreaming in the ruins of an ancient Elvhen temple and had returned them safely home in their caravan before continuing to move on. They hadn't really talked about everything else since then, though. Neither Hawke nor Fenris had mentioned Leto or the apparitions of Danarius…or the…squid. They hadn't talked about what the Fade had revealed about each of them nor about the two of them. Hawke was certain they would, though. One day. Maybe.

Still wrapped in the heavy knit blanket, the mage carefully turned in bed to look over at the space on his left. Hawke smiled. The first time he had ever done this, he had found that pillow empty and Fenris already dressed and contemplating the fireplace before he'd left him behind all those years ago. But now, Hawke found himself gazing down at Fenris' bare back, his face tucked into the crook of his arm, and the rest of him so thoroughly cocooned in the sheet that one could hardly see the delicate rise and fall of his slumbering breaths. It seemed such a trivial thing, but the mage never failed to feel his heart swell with affection every time he observed the routine intimacy of sharing a bed with the elf.

He could barely see Fenris in the dim light but it made his other senses all that more acute. The pop and hiss of the burning logs on the far side of the room. The single, diffused, flicker of low light through the heavy curtains surrounding the bed frame. The smell of cotton soap on the bed-clothes and sandalwood in Fenris' hair. The faint glimmer of bluish light that occasionally sparked along the lyrium patterns on his partner's skin and outlined his form against the gloom. That comforting combination of familiar scents and body-warm down in a well-slept-in bed.

They hadn't been together since returning. Fenris had insisted that Hawke rest and recuperate from his ordeal, tending to his wounds each morning before breakfast and ensuring that nothing came their way to disturb him from afternoons of reading, napping, and idle chat. But, if Hawke was being honest with himself, he was starting to go a little stir crazy and had hoped that Fenris would ease his vigil now that it was clear that the mage would not only survive, but was in quite robust health considering his ordeal. Now, watching Fenris sleep and lightly drawing his eyes over his relaxed form had the mage realizing just how much he missed being close to his love. He missed his touch. His kisses. The way his guard dropped when it was just the two of them, snuggling close in the cordoned-off world of their own little corner room.

Hawke closed his eyes and pulled himself close up behind the elf, letting heat, taste, and touch guide him to where he wanted. Pressing up against Fenris' back and wrapping an arm around his middle, Hawke nosed into the soft hairs at the nape of the elf's neck. Fenris stirred and mumbled something nonsensical but didn't wake. The mage decided to leave a kiss there then, happily breathing in the scent of his lover's hair and skin. Fenris always smelled like simple soap and steel, with hints of lyrium and the taste of electricity on the air. It was now a smell that Hawke so strongly associated with their intimacy that he began to get aroused from just this casual nuzzle.

He swept his hand down Fenris' side and over his hip just beneath the edge of the blanket. Always so smooth and silky, with the nearly imperceptible scarred ridges of his tattoos just beneath the first layer of touch. Like a blind man reading a raised text, the mage mapped out the curves of both body and line with his fingertips until he heard Fenris give a short huff in response. He was awake now.

"Hawke." Came the first whispered warning, barely audible from where Fenris' face was still buried in his pillow.

"Shhh." He replied. "I just want to touch you."

Fenris made no further protests and immediately settled, only giving voice to his acquiescence with a murmured sigh.

After a moment of gentle caresses, Hawke pulled back slightly. "Fen? Can…can I ask you a…delicate question?"

The elf tensed but nodded, still further hiding his face in his elbow.

"When I touch you like this," The mage swept a wide, warm, palm down Fenris' back and over the rise of his hind-side to the crease of his thigh just below. "Does it make you think of…him?"

"No."

Hawke was surprised. His answer had been sure and direct, spoken without hesitation. But considering all they had seen, all they had been through together, surely…

"Danarius never touched me like you do, Liam." Fenris continued. "He never got anything he didn't rip out of me. His touch demanded. Yours asks."

"Oh? How is that?"

"It's unsure to start." Fenris squirmed against the fingers now tracing down the contour of his hip and then to his belly. "But then you give more…when I tell you I want it."

At that, the elf raised his body just enough for Hawke to slide his hand beneath him, under his small-clothes, and to begin caressing him much more intimately. When the mage heard Fenris' breath hitch at the contact, he smiled. He fondled his lover gently, allowing him to grow hard in his hand with teasing strokes. He also took the opportunity to lay more needy kisses along Fenris' neck and shoulder, unconsciously leaning over his lover's back and pressing him down as he mouthed the edges of the lyrium curl over his scapula. Hawke didn't notice just how much he'd managed to roll on top of Fenris until he felt his lover's hips shift back against him when he tried to thrust into the hand still moving on him.

A little breathless, Hawke slid back, released the captive elf, and pulled him over to face him.

Fenris didn't object and only lay, partially splayed across the rumpled covers. Hawke let the silence stretch out between them; focusing as much as he could on what he could see of Fenris' face. Those dark hooded eyes, glittering in the dim light but his expression passive if not for the occasional sharp rise of his breathing that indicated his arousal. Finally, with a sense of unnecessary solemnity, Hawke laid his hand on the elf's flat belly, unconsciously circling his thumb just beneath his lover's navel. Taking a deep breath, he forced himself to look - to really look - at Fenris. To feel him speak, not through words, but through contact and response. The mage then drew his hand along the taut skin, up over his ribs and the smooth swell of pectoral muscles. Fingers lingered on the scarred line under his right arm; a souvenir from a battle many years ago now.

Fenris was almost impossible to read, unless you knew the language. Complicated, esoteric, grammars of haunted pain and half-remembered traumas communicated in the arcane vocabularies of fear and isolation. Words never made real by giving them actual sound in physical space but written, and hidden, within the composition of his body. 'A palimpsest,' Hawke remembered thinking. Like a manuscript that someone had violently scraped clean in order to begin inking their own story on stolen pages. Now, all the words blurred together and the ink that everyone had once thought indelible was beginning to bleed and smudge.

The mage brought his fingers up to his lover's face - high brow, prominent cheekbones, the straight bridge of his nose, the deep hollows that gathered shadows beneath his eyes. Handsome in an almost classical sense; like the busts of ancient rulers on pedestals in historic buildings. Hawke let his fingers glide along the lean, straight jaw. When they brushed Fenris' mouth, the other's lips parted, tongue flicking deftly over his fingertips with a teasing breath. The mage immediately thought his heart would try to force its way out of his chest; with the hard jump it made against his sternum.

"You know what else?" Hawke asked, trying to lighten the intensity a bit.

"What?" Fenris replied with an amiable tone.

"Want to know how I know that I would make a terrible magister?"

Fenris narrowed his eyes slightly but couldn't keep the bemused expression off of his face long enough to fool Hawke into thinking he was at all perturbed by his questions. "And what is that?"

"Fashion."

Fenris almost laughed outright. He knew what Hawke was referring to. From their ill-conceived exploits in the courts of Orlais to a singularly memorable pair of smashing striped tights worn at the gala of Gallio Ravenica, Hawke simply didn't have it in him to adhere to the dress standards of the truly upper classes. He could barely pull off a plumed hat without threatening to set his entire wardrobe on fire. There was no possible way he'd ever make for a ministerial court position without offending each and every person he managed to come across with nothing more than an ill-chosen shirt.

And for that, Fenris loved him all the more.

"Yes." He sighed with a chuckle. "I truly do miss those tights."

Hawke grumbled but took the comment good-naturedly. Fenris, however, seemed to have relaxed a bit too much during their banter for his preference and now seemed almost ready to drift back into sleep, curled up as he was in the mage's comforting embrace. Not nearly done with him yet though, Hawke did the first thing that came to mind. He leaned over and very gently touched his lips to Fenris'.

There was no immediate response from the elf. Instead, Hawke only became aware a few moments later that his lover's arms had slowly come up and around his neck. The lips beneath his parted without resistance and the kiss deepened as the mage's tongue set about to explore the well-mapped territory of Fenris' mouth once again. It was still near to total darkness in the confines of the curtained bed, but Hawke reveled in the feeling of Fenris' body arching up against him. He loved that heady rush of desire that enflamed him as he moved on to taste other parts of his companion. The corners of his mouth, the white lines on his chin, and the pulse point just beneath his right ear. Hawke always did have a particular love for this spot; behind the pointed ear, beneath the fringes of his hair, where Fenris' tantalizingly unique scent was the strongest. He heard the soft moan in response and nipped hard along the curve of his neck.

"Hawke."

This time it was no warning, but rather a plea. Whispered, hesitantly, through the tension coiling up between them.

Beneath Hawke's mouth, Fenris' heart was beginning to beat rapidly. He shivered at the hot breath in his ear and the sharp teeth that made him tense with excitement. Whenever Hawke engaged in that little habitual endeavor of nipping at his ears or biting his neck, Fenris often found himself literally weak with need following after. For whatever reason, these simple actions inevitably excited him beyond the capacity for rational thought. Maybe it was something about elven physiology, maybe it was just Hawke, but either way, every time the mage started in on him like this, it would only be a few mere embarrassing moments before he was painfully aroused and begging for release.

Hawke caught his lover's lower lip with his teeth. When the mage's hand wandered back over his hipbone, around the curve of his thigh, and up again, Fenris nearly stopped breathing. When the broad, strong fingers wrapped around his cock again, the elf's breath hissed through suddenly clenched teeth. Grinning against a mouthful of skin, Hawke tightened his grip and, deliberately, slowly at first, began to stroke his mate back into a wanton frenzy.

"I love you like this." The mage purred, continuing the caress while kissing his lover's bared throat. He even smiled as Fenris undulated his hips and pleaded softly for him to continue. He felt a drop of slippery fluid form on the tip of the elf's swollen sex and he slicked it over the tip, causing Fenris to buck against his hand and gasp sharply. "I want you _so_ much right now, but I need to hear you ask me." Hawke continued, nearly growling the words into the other's skin. "Please, Fen. Tell me what you want me to do."

"Stop."

Hawke froze. That…was not what he'd been anticipating.

With wary concern, the mage released his lover and leaned back; immediately giving Fenris as much space on the bed as he might want. Caught up in the moment, Hawke almost blurt out an apology, afraid that he'd horrifically misjudged something he should otherwise have been aware of. A wrenching sensation formed in his gut that threatened to undo him. Had he failed to really learn anything from the Fade at all? But before he could launch into the depths of his remorse, a finger pressed his lips into silence while a hand flattened on his chest in order to push him onto his back.

"Last time, this was just a dream. But not now…now…I can have you the way _I_ want."

Without being able to see, Hawke wasn't exactly sure what Fenris was doing, shifting and rustling about the bed, until he saw his nude silhouette rise up at his side and then slide down his body and further into the bedclothes. He felt Fenris' weight settle over his thighs a moment later and then his hand grasping him, and then his mouth as the elf lowered his head and began to suckle his lover's still considerable erection. The mage's surprised moan encouraged him to take it into his mouth further and to flick his tongue so as to elicit as many twitches and murmurs of pleasure as he could.

Hawke couldn't help but stare down at what he could see of the top of Fenris' head. He didn't bob up and down as might be more typical of this act, but rather alternated between taking the mage to the back of his throat and showering him with wet kisses and teasing flicks of his tongue. Fenris simply had the most amazing, talented, mouth when it came to this kind of pleasure, though he so rarely performed it. Hawke didn't even want to begin speculating as to how he'd managed to perfect this particular skill though and was content to just be grateful that he willingly used it to drive him to the brink. His hands trembled as they sifted through Fenris' hair and he began to pant through his moans; whispering hotly as he encouraged the beautiful elf to continue.

"Oh…. fuck, Fen. Yes. Please…"

When this resulted in Fenris suddenly deep-throating him all the while squeezing the base of his shaft firmly to prevent his release, Hawke cried out incoherently. The ecstasy crashed over the mage in pulsing waves, never quite breaking but never receding enough for him to regain his wits. But then, Fenris stopped swallowing around him and allowed his lover's length to slide out of his mouth. When Hawke reflexively reached out for him, he nearly sobbed with relief at the feeling of the elf slowly, smoothly, gliding up his body. What he wasn't prepared for was the absolutely predatory gaze that met his when they finally came face to face once more.

Golden eyes keen and narrowed. His jaw set in a stern line. A hand on the mage's chest and one in his hair, pulling his head back with an unexpectedly strong grip. Fenris straddling his hips, hooking the tops of his feet over Hawke's thighs, and pinning him to the bed with martial grace. Heated breath and silken lips barely a millimeter from his own when Fenris made his demand in a low and wolfish voice.

"You're mine. Aren't you? You belong to me, Liam Hawke."

The mage stuttered, both out of surprise and out of a renewed surge of lust. There was no question who the master was once again.

"Say it." The grip in the mage's hair tightened along with the powerful thighs still holding him immobile. "Say you're mine."

"I'm yours. Always, Fen. I've always been yours."

Hawke felt Fenris shift above him again, leaning slightly forward before reaching down with his free hand to take the mage's erection into his palm again. He didn't, however, let up his hold at the back of Hawke's head at all.

"Tell me again. Are you mine?"

"Yes."

"Who do you belong to?"

"You. Only you."

Before Hawke could resort to babbling (as he might have given the situation), Fenris closed on him for a searing kiss. Nipping his bottom lip hard enough even to draw a small droplet of blood. The mage, however, did not notice. His own hands had suddenly gone up to grab onto Fenris' hips, his nails curling much too hard into the flesh of the elf's lower back as he suddenly rose up and then dropped back down, forcing Hawke to penetrate him in a hard thrust. When Fenris reared back at the feeling of his taking and being taken by his lover in this way, Hawke could only make out just enough in the darkness to see his lover moisten his lips with his tongue and then open his eyes to stare down at the mage as he took him all the way in.

"I said, who do you…belong to?" Fenris' breath might have stuttered but his voice was still commanding.

"You." Hawke had to bite his lip to keep from shouting the answer.

He knew better than to try and move, though, and held still beneath Fenris' weight. When he felt himself fully seated inside of his lover, Hawke shuddered and groaned out his name. Fenris then began to move on his own, rocking against him with gentle strokes at first. But finally, when the indescribable tightness eased and Fenris was able to move with more vigor and intent, Hawke began to move in time with him. Fenris' sharp exclamation of pleasure was all the further encouragement he needed as he set his palms against the sides of his lover's hips to begin guiding him up and down on his length.

Finally, Fenris disentangled his hand from the back of Hawke's head to be able to sit up slightly, causing him to hiss through his teeth when the better angle allowed Hawke to pull him down in just such a way that it pleasured him just right inside. It was all he could do to tilt his head back and grab onto the top of the headboard for support.

"Oh, Gods…Fenris…." Hawke moaned, nearly thrashing beneath his lover as he rode him harder, using the bedframe for leverage. "I…what…what do I do…what do you want me to do...?"

He heard Fenris chuckle in a husky, uneven, voice. He did not relent, however, fucking himself hard on his lover's ready cock all the while the mage continued to drag him down against his hips. Hawke could feel the heated flush of passion in the body above him and hear the way the toned chest faltered with barely restrained cries. He then nearly stopped in amazement when the hand that Fenris had been resting on his chest for additional support changed position and curled around his own cock. Hawke had never really seen Fenris touch himself like that before; or, at least, not quite so brazenly. But as the elf began to stroke himself, Hawke began to lose control.

Fenris groaned raggedly as his lover bucked harder beneath him, driving upwards more forcefully into his body. He actually didn't realize that his unconscious self-pleasure was driving the mage half-mad with lust. He'd only started to do so because the other man's hands were already occupied with steadying and guiding his hips and he didn't want him to stop doing that.

"Fen…Fenris…. I'm going to…"

"Yes." He heard the elf growl. "Come with me, Hawke. Watch me take what I want from you and then come inside me."

It was at this point that Liam Hawke was relatively certain that he was actually dead and that, somehow, he'd managed to find his way into the happy, paradise, part of the Fade that was supposed to be forbidden to people like him. His mind was absolutely wild with excitement at the vision of his strong, gorgeous, lover stroking himself and moaning with abandon on top of him. The thrusts that continued to shake him must have felt great as well, because Fenris then arched back as his breath came in quick, sharp, pants. All of this told Hawke that his lover was on the edge of release, and he held fast to his vantage point so as to be as obedient to Fenris' demands as he could.

Fenris then fell forward over his lover, opening his eyes to stare deeply into Hawke's as climax overcame him. His lips parted and his brow furrowed, but he had no breath to moan with as he spilled himself onto the mage's stomach and chest. Instead, demanding, with his intense gaze and the feral curve of his mouth, for Hawke to watch him come undone. To lay quiescent as Fenris took his orgasm and relished in it. Riding his lover's body and openly enjoying his own touch in ways that no slave would ever have dared. Hawked growled in response, almost snarling as he continued to push into him, shivering as Fenris' muscles clenched around his cock in delightful, spasmodic, waves. But there was no holding out. As instructed, Hawke came a heartbeat after his lover, sucking in air with pained gasps as he pulsed inside of him with aching satisfaction. As he did so, he released his bruising hold on the elf's hips and put his arms around his torso, pulling him down and hugging him tightly while mumbling his joy against his shoulder.

Finally spent, neither of them had the capacity, or the wherewithal, to move. Hawke trembled in the aftermath of one of the most intense orgasms he could recall ever having and Fenris seemed equally incapable of gathering himself back together right away. Rather, he seemed content to take in deep, unsteady, breaths with his forehead resting on the mage's collar bone. They couldn't even muster up the energy to kiss, so they held one another for long moments; recovering and enjoying the return to quiet intimacy.

Hawke was the first to speak as he finally forced himself to turn and allow his exhausted lover to slide back down into the bed at his side.

"I love you." He whispered against Fenris' cheek, plying him with careful, but loving, kisses. "Now. Here. Anywhere. And always. I love you, Fenris."

He did not see the small smile that crept up onto his lover's face, only felt him move closer so that he might fall back asleep wrapped in the mage's arms and snuggled into his chest.

"Hnngg." The elf finally replied. "Oh...one more thing, before I forget about it again."

"Yes, Fen?"

"Will you help me...to...write a letter tomorrow?"

"A letter? To whom?"

Hawke swore he could now feel Fenris' grin against his chest.

"Varric. I owe him the courtesy of a reply. A lengthy, confusing, and completely nonsensical reply. And to tell him that you're alive, of course."

Hawke chuckled, gently running tender fingers through Fenris' hair as he began to relax and settle. He almost didn't hear the soft words that carried him back into sleep once more.

"And I love you. Ma vhenan."


	12. Chapter 12 - Epilogue

**Epilogue – Onset and Rime**

_(This is it! We've come to end of another story. BUT! Do not lament, my friends! This is not the end of the journey. I still have a few shorts and ficlets to add to his series; which I will likely do over the next few months. And, who knows, DA:4 might still come out in our respective lifetimes. I say this because, when it does, I can assure you that our friends here will certainly return for another installment in the White Hart series. Apparently, I am incapable of leaving well enough alone. But you all knew that already, I think. Until then, see you in the fiction-verse! - Nas)_

* * *

Mariner tapped his foot impatiently. Though, the very fact that he stood at the precipice of a great cliff that descended into nothing but clouds hundreds of feet below, belied some confusion as to what he could possibly be waiting for.

His caravan, the Arda Elusivir, remained encamped more than half a kilometer to the east, where they waited for further word from him on the direction they would travel next. As they had for many months now, they trusted their Oracle and knew he would not lead them astray on what was now the long journey home. Together, they'd left Kirkwall over a week ago, having returned Liam Hawke and Fenris, whom they now called _Som Virelan_ (a dialectical term meaning Fade Walker), to their home in Hightown. Hawke had been completely delirious throughout the entire journey, in and out of consciousness as he tried to shake the lingering effects of such a long time physically in the Fade, giving Mariner a final opportunity to converse with Fenris privately as to the nature of the future he had recently divined.

Sitting across from another, on either end of a pallet at the back of a simple house-wagon at the end of the line, the two elves rested comfortably as the road lightly jostled them back and forth, and gently rocked the senseless mage draped between them.

"I don't really trust Oracles." Fenris had said, cradling an unconscious Hawke as the caravan wound through the woodlands north of the Free Marches.

"I know." The _ashvani_ replied with a wry smile. "But there are some things I need to tell you."

Fenris sighed, gently wiping a damp lock of hair from the mage's forehead as the borrowed vardo teetered along. "Is this something about the ornament you gave me again?"

"In a sense. But what I wanted to stress most importantly is that I want you to keep it, Fen. And by that, I mean keep it with you. It holds a powerful memory; one that you will be able to call upon whenever hatred or despair threatens to separate the two of you again. It was once mine, but now you've made it yours."

Fenris nodded. "Alright but…Mariner? What is it?"

The White Hart sighed but tilted his head genially. "It is a part of a world that no longer exists, I'm afraid. A sliver, a shard, of a time and place that elves such as yourself have never had the chance to experience. At least, not yet."

Fenris blinked owlishly and raised an incredulous eyebrow. "What?"

Mariner chuckled at the other elf's obvious irritation with his obtuse explanation. Unfortunately, there was only so much he could tell him, even under the guise of Oracular augury. "It came from Arlathan, from the ancient home of all Elvhen peoples."

"Hn. Ok…sure."

"Not a fan of Elvhen culture, are we?"

Fenris rolled his eyes but tried not to come off as ungrateful. "It's not that." He replied. "It's just…to be frank, I've never had that kind of connection with…elf-ness. Or, at least, not to my recollection. We never spoke Elvhen or anything like it in Danarius' household. I only even really know a few words here and there that I've picked up since. My native language is Tevene, all of the history and customs I know are from Tevinter, or from the Qun when I was in Seheron. In my life, being an elf was only ever a hindrance…never a source of pride."

"And yet." Mariner prodded. "You are an essential part of our people. You hold their freedom above anything else. You understand their plight like no other can, because you have lived it yourself. You have dedicated your life to fighting for them against those who would enslave them. You may not know the words or the traditions but you are not separated from them."

Fenris shrugged and compulsively rechecked Hawke, who remained fitfully asleep and mumbling nonsense, bound up in wool wrappings to keep him warm and from thrashing around too much. "Maybe I am, maybe I'm not. But what matters to me is right here."

"I know." Mariner said, leaning forward to lay a comforting hand on Fenris' knee. "But the world is about to change, Fen. It's coming. You can feel it as much as I can. You don't need to read signs and symbols to understand what I am saying. And it will involve him just as much as it will involve you. There will be an uprising, an insurrection, a great turning against the powers-that-be that will change Elvhendom as we know it. A leader rises among them and there will be war."

"You know this for certain, do you?" Fenris laughed mirthlessly. "Mariner, there have been slave uprisings before. Many times. And they all end the same way, with destruction and defeat. Nothing changes."

"Not this time."

Fenris did not like the darkly ominous tone that suddenly descended with Mariner's words. It was almost palpable; like a change in the seasons coming in on the outside air.

"The Fade is restless with anticipation but the time is not yet upon us. For now, though, you and Hawke will finally know some years of peace, I can promise you that much. And you should take that time and relish it. You've earned it. Live, Fenris. Live as you have never been afforded the chance to before. Love him freely and enjoy the pleasures and happiness of his love in return. But know that the time of revolution will come and that you will know it is upon you when you hear the call of a Great Wolf."

Fenris raised an incredulous eyebrow. "A Great…Wolf?"

Mariner chuckled. "Yes. I understand the confusion that might inspire in you but you'll know what I mean when it happens."

"Fine." Fenris acquiesced, though he still wasn't sure why Mariner was telling him any of this. Cryptic sayings were never his forte. He just wanted to be home, with Hawke. He wanted the house in Kirkwall and the quiet of their bedroom. He wanted peace. If he would once again be called upon to take up arms in defense of himself, his companion, or his people at some nebulous point in the future…well…he'd deal with that when it came. Just as he always had.

As for the elves, the Elvhen, maybe he did owe them a second look. After all, it had been the secrets of the Elusivir _ashvani_ that had brought Hawke back to him when nothing else in the world could. It had been the Arda Caravani who had rescued them from the Veil; pulled them from the brink of the abyss as they had tumbled together into oblivion. Elves who had succored and revived them, and then awakened them back into the living world with strange chants and stranger rituals, in the ruins of a broken-down temple they seemed to know oddly too well. They had then taken them on the road home in the back of their own wagons. As a result, Mariner and his family were the closest things Fenris had ever had to anything resembling an Elvhen community. He'd be lying to himself to say that meant nothing. Or that Mariner and the other _ashvani_ hadn't come to be important to the both of them.

Fenris paused in his thoughts.

"Mariner? How did you find us?"

"There was never a time I didn't know where you were."

He twitched. Mariner was being mysterious again but his tone was so blissfully reassuring it was hard to stay annoyed with him.

"You brought me into the Fade. You knew I would be able to find Hawke somehow. You were there when we were nearly lost. I suppose you're going to tell me that this was all some kind of Oracle thing?"

Mariner chuckled, watching as Fenris once again reached down to quiet the fitful mage with a nearly unconscious gesture; lightly caressing his face with gentle fingertips. But it seemed to work. Hawke almost immediately fell back into a restless sleep. Honestly, Mariner even marveled a little at how Fenris could accomplish so much with just the lightest touch to the man next to him.

"I'd be lying by omission if I did." He finally replied. "I don't want to give you the impression that any and all Elusivir _ashvani_ are in the habit of walking physically through the Veil but at the same time, I'm sorry Fenris. I really can't explain much more than I already have."

"Very well." The other elf sighed. "Keep your secrets then. But answer one thing for me, will you?"

"Of course. If I can."

"Is there a happy ending anywhere in this?"

Mariner was slightly taken aback. "I'm…not sure I understand the question."

"You're a fortune-teller, aren't you?" Fenris replied with a smirk, taking some measure of amusement out of the _ashvani's_ scowl at the use of the more derogatory term. "It's just that..." He then hesitated. "My life has a tendency to go…poorly. I mean, any time I have found even the slightest bit of contentment, it's always taken away from me. I've learned not to hope for more. But if you really do have some kind of…sense…of the future, I'm wondering…"

Mariner's expression gentled and he remained patient as Fenris worked out the words.

"Will he stay...with me, I mean? Can we really be together?"

The younger elf chanced a look down where Fenris was still tenderly carding his fingers through Hawke's sweat-dampened hair; where he had the mage's head cradled in his lap.

"You mean, do you get to keep him?"

Fenris frowned but Mariner clarified before his irritation could show.

"Yes, Fen. Hawke is yours and he always will be. Until the bitter end."

"Hmph." Came the reply. "Well that's vague."

"You want something more concrete?"

Fenris glanced back up at him pensively. It was clear that he was still largely unsure about oracular pronouncements, but Mariner had never steered him wrong; not to mention the fact that the wan and wily _ashvani_ had also managed to demonstrate some rather fantastical abilities regarding the Fade as of late. Maybe he really could read the signs.

Fenris nodded.

"Alright. Then how about this? The revolution that is soon to descend upon us will call to the both of you in ways you cannot yet imagine. You will meet it together though, in the quiet and on the battlefield. There will be pain and fear; all of the terrible things you already know. But I will tell you one secret, Fenris, that only you and I will share. One thing you can always be certain of even when nothing else makes sense. And it is this: Hawke's hair will be whiter than yours before you are parted again. And when it comes, he will follow after you."

There was an uncanny magic in the Elusivir's words and Fenris wasn't sure how to respond at first. But what Mariner said next would stay with him for many years to come.

"Is en mar vhenan." (Elven: He is your heart.)

Silence fell between them for several minutes as the word settled in his chest.

"And Fen?"

"Yes?"

"I also want to thank you."

"For what?"

"Trusting me. I swear to you, it was not misplaced."

"You did what you said you would. That's more than most people in this world."

Mariner had been well aware for the remaining hours they'd spent together that Fenris wasn't exactly sure if he believed him or not, though he had continued to absently palm the Winternight crystal in his hand until the gates of Kirkwall had been in view. Mariner knew that Fenris still didn't take much stock in divination or symbols, Fade-touched or otherwise. But the idea was now seeded and Aras Telvani was quite sure that he'd be seeing Hawke and Fenris again before he reached his last crossroads. Though, they weren't quite the same people he'd met on the coast just a year or more ago. They were now the Little Wolf and the Circling Hawk; the new Elvhenildë born out of the depths of the Beyond. Who had passed from life, into death, and back again. They were a part of what had been set in motion throughout the cosmos, whether they knew it or not.

Now, Mariner was ready to begin the next part of the journey he knew would eventually take him back to the beginning of the path he too had started long ago, that which was paradoxically a return to his own end. But such was the nature of the dinan'shiral, where death was both the destination and the journey.

He sighed into the winds whipped up by thermals on the cliffs. "I won't let you walk this path alone, my love." He said to sky and earth. "How is it they say? If you carry this burden because your soul is stained, then I will dye mine the same color. I was not apart from you then; I am not apart from you now."

He had left Solas asleep in the safety of the fortress at Skyhold and had taken some time to peruse the murals that graced the walls all around the rotunda. Masterpieces, each and every one of them, telling a story that he was sure had been left for him (a point he had taken some great pride in). He had peered into the depths of the rich hues and shading, run his fingers over the textured swells of plaster, and breathed his astonishment at all that was there for him to see. A story of the past that already spoke of their future. When the jaunty Cole-spirit had then found him there, they'd spent over an hour whispering clandestine things to one another in the spectral creole of the Fade. When he had left, the compassionate incarnate had vowed to watch over the elder apostate until he awoke and to say nothing of what the White Hart had told him. Though, he too, was now fascinated by the pictures on the walls.

In the distance, the clouds parted on a beam of morning sunlight too warm to reflect and the single, lone, Elusivir _ashvani_ watched as something unbelievable began to take shape in the ethereal wisps of dream and fog so high up into the sky as to be easily mistaken for tiny cracks in the firmament of night itself. Roots, of a great tree, that must have spanned thousands of miles before reaching a trunk that arched into the heavens to send boughs high enough to cradle the moon. Barely visible in the vast distance, barely an outline, but there.

It was as if his thoughts painted the sky; his palette in all the colors of the dawn, mixed with rain, and brushed into the light by wind and bird feathers.

At first glance, a normal observer would have said it was a dead tree appearing on the horizon. Little more than desiccated drift wood on the sea of clouds. Grey and spindly; the color and shape of petrified lightening. Unreachable even to the flightiest fanciful desires of the heart. It was just so far away. But Aras Telvani could see what no one could see; in the spaces between the Veil, the Fade, and the World.

It was Arlathan herself, and on the tips of her branches, the first buds of spring.

**FIN**


End file.
